Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They all fall down, in the end...

Kit had been planning the move for a month or so. It was becoming too dangerous to stay in the city, and every day posed a hundred different risks. Now, the winter was coming in. Winters were renowned for their cruelty here, and no doubt the bands of looters and nomads from outside the city would come to crowd the streets and strip the crumbling buildings of anything they had left to offer.

Loners didn’t stand a chance now. No matter how street-smart they were, no matter how well prepared, the gangs and clans were stronger, smarter, better armed. She’d established a number of hideaways to give her the best chance at escaping if someone decided that she looked like easy prey, but it was getting harder.

Three times in the last week she had been chased down by separate groups of raiders who believed she was a threat, or that she might have food.

Unfortunately for them, growing up hungry had made her lean, and she was born in this forsaken city. She’d known it before the bombings made it almost unrecognisable. Nobody could outrun her in the rubble-strewn alleys or waterlogged subways.

But she was on her own now, and there was nobody to share the watch with while she slept restlessly in the grey hours of dawn. She knew that she would die without somewhere safer to sleep. Tiredness was already making her slow and stupid.

Her speed was the only advantage she had, and if this pattern continued, she’d eventually stumble into the clutches of someone stronger than her, smarter, less hungry. She would lose. Either that or in fatigue-driven clumsiness miss her footing and injure herself in a fall or a raider trap. That would be the end... but at least a more dignified end than at the hands of some murderous scavenger, who might well eat her if their clan was starved enough by the winter snows.

She had lost the fight for this city. It was time to go.

She ducked away from staring into the shaft of light bleeding through the brickwork, and double-checked her preparations. She moved fluidly, animal-like on all fours across the crawlspace. She’d learned to suppress the sounds her body made, even movement and involuntary sounds like sneezing.

Supplies, all in order, scrounged up over many months: rope, knife, blanket, lighter, water canteen, needle and thread. Foil-wrapped snacks, dried fruit, anything that wasn’t too heavy or noisy to carry. All went into a waterproof bag inside an old tan rucksack.

She hoisted the pack and checked the weight. Just right, and nestled flat enough against her frame that it wouldn’t snag on anything. She hefted the rope around her, the weight of it secure at her torso, the embrace of the strands bringing the closest comfort she had felt since her family were still around.

A scramble through the two-foot wide hole in the corner, and she was out of the crawlspace and climbing. Hand-over-hand to the next floor, and from there to a rusting fire escape walkway.

The forest was visible from here. Beyond the shattered tops of buildings and through the mists of encroaching evening, the treetops spread their green-brown blanket over the foothills invitingly. She had heard a rumour that there were caves out there, big ones with fresh water and solid walls.

It was a bad idea. Nobody went out there in winter.

But she had nobody left. Loneliness would eat at the mind after too long unchecked, send a person mad and rambling like the terrified, ragged scavengers in the streets below, talking to themselves and carrying mountains of useless scrap on their backs, too pitiful to be targeted even by raiders.

She could risk joining one of the peaceful groups of survivors, but there was no easy way of finding out who was ‘peaceful’, and then there would be months of distrust, stress and sleeplessness, until she proved herself reliable or they proved themselves murderous.

So, die in the city at the hands of humanity, or die out there at the hands of nature? It was worth the gamble.

She made the running jump to the hole in the wall of the opposite building without too many scrapes. The grubby cloth bindings wrapped around her hands and knees helped dull the blow at she hit the ledge. She hefted herself onto it, and looked about.

Crouched in the shadow, she held her breath, a habit she had adopted after too many run-ins due to her own impatience: forcing herself to be perfectly still against her instinct. No sounds nearby. She moved again, swift and wide-eyed as a mouse.

As she made it to the next building, she noticed a pale cloth rippling in the breeze, and drew her knife. The fabric looked clean and free from mould, a curtain perhaps. She tore it down and rolled it as tightly as she could. Into the pack. Less than a minute, and she was moving again.

▵▾▵▾▵

By nightfall, Kit was at the city outskirts. From here it was a straight run across open, rocky ground to the edge of the forest. Tall wooden and tarpaulin structures crouched over the road, defending it, claiming it for whichever group of butchers lived out here.

Fires were lit at the boundary, and the forms of lookouts were silhouetted in the flames. She could hear their muted conversation, and the rumble of a generator. From her crouched position, she plotted a rough route over the fractured concrete to the treeline. About a mile. A ten-minute sprint under the eyes of predators.

The dark was all she would have for cover, but her night vision had improved since the time of freely-accessible electricity. She closed her eyes, held a breath, released it. Again. And once more, until her pulse was as even as it would ever be. Then she bolted out into the night.

Her feet hit the concrete heavily but quiet on her soft-soled boots. She altered her movements, stopping and starting, sometimes sprinting, sometimes lying still on her belly in the dirt for several minutes at a time, breathless in the dark, waiting for the next window when the guards looked away.

Towards the end of the sprint, she allowed herself a glimmer of hope. A mistake. As she slowed her full-tilt pace for just a moment, a cry went up from behind and to her right. Maybe 100 metres away. She didn’t turn around. Kept running. There was no way they could get to her before she made the treeline. They wouldn’t catch her today.

Silence for several strides, then a shot echoed, and a bullet ricocheted past. Another, closer. She dropped to the floor with a huff, rolled, letting instinct guide her into irregular, unpredictable movements. On each exhale, she breathed out the sting of panic, willed her burning lungs to do what they were designed for, just a little longer.

One more shot, too close as she got to her feet and zig-zagged across the broken scrubland and into the trees. Behind a large oak, and down onto all fours to pant her laboured breaths and listen. No more shots. They had lost sight of her. Today, the prey outwitted the predator once more.

She felt fear trying to sap her strength. Locking up from adrenaline was not on the agenda. Panic meant stupidity, and stupidity meant death. She made off into the undergrowth at speed before her thoughts could catch up to her, ignoring the stitch in her chest.

Brambles and branches snagged her too-long hair as she ran, but she was unphased, keeping one arm high to protect her eyes. She’d be glad of the extra warmth her long hair provided, once winter came. She watched for traps, took note of a couple of badly-hidden snares. Once she found shelter, she looked forwards to making off with the butchers’ food supply. Little vengeances like that made all the difference to one’s outlook.

She pressed on, deeper into the forest. She would survive a night or two easily, but she would need to find a hollow to overwinter in, far enough from the road that the hunters wouldn’t find her.

There were some promising cliff faces off to her left, so she scrambled up the steep slope towards them. There had been a trail here once, she noted. The rotting wooden railing was still there and offered some assistance as she climbed, though part of it gave way under her grip.

She wrangled her pulse down to a healthier rate as she climbed, and took a sparing sip of water to cool her burning throat. Somewhere upon the ridge, she snagged a particularly sturdy stick to use as leverage, and with its help she made it to the cliffs. They were craggy, lots of inviting alcoves and caves dotting the face, and she checked each one carefully in the low light.

Not carefully enough.

Stepping back from surveying the rockface with her hands, her stomach lurched as her heel found a tree root and she tripped, tilted, feeling the ground give way to empty air behind her, scrabbling, snatching handfuls of wet leaves, fingertips clawing at unforgiving rock as the unseen pit below swallowed her.

A cave, bored straight down through the solid rock. Unnoticed in the darkness. The walls were uneven, slick with water and mineral residue. Nothing to grip onto.

Rushing air, and then her ribs met an outcrop, winding her, but she instinctively jammed one hand at the back of the ledge and jarred her arm, stopping her descent with a repressed grunt. Her other hand groped blindly for a hold, found one, and gripped fast.

She hung suspended, panting. No way to reach the rope slung uselessly across her body, weighing her down, betraying her slowly with its bulk. Her ribs were on fire, grazed, one arm going numb, her lungs squashed by the awkward angle of the outcrop.

Breathe. Think.

Her fingers were slipping. She kicked her legs. Nothing below. She knocked some loose shards of rock with her elbow, listened to them clatter into the maw. Three seconds before they hit something. A long drop. Too far.

With some effort, she found a better hold for her uninjured arm, pulled herself further onto the tiny outcrop, her face and shoulder grating against the cold, slick rock and her other hand now free. Quickly she brought the rope over her head and pinned the bulk of it between her legs, still dangling in empty space.

With her mouth and free hand, she fashioned a sling. The rope fought her, tangling around itself and threatening to slip from her grasp and take her with it. With some wiggling and twisting, she got the sling wrapped around her at the top of her thighs and diagonally over her torso.

Her fingers searched above her gingerly, finding a secure place to loop it into a makeshift pulley system. The ledge dug cruelly into her stomach as she worked. She focussed on the sensation, didn’t think about the distance beneath her. She locked off the spare end of the rope in her hand, and tested its hold. Secure enough, so she released her death grip on the ledge, shuffled back until the rope held her completely.

Looking up, the outside world was framed by the edge of the pit. Barely visible treetops, no stars or moonlight. There was no safe way to climb back out in this darkness. Carefully, painstakingly, she lowered herself down. The cavern was wide: when suspended, she could reach out her hands and never touch the sides.

With shaking legs and stiff fingers, she reached what felt like solid ground. Crouched, held her breath and listened. Her hands were raw from the rope running through them, and as she shook them to get some feeling back, her fingers brushed the floor. Soft. Fleshy. Damp. Leaves? It seemed unlikely that there would be plants down here, but her searching fingertips told her that it was true.

Scrabbling about and mapping the terrain in utter darkness, she found the stick she had scavenged earlier. Must have dropped it in the fall. It made a perfect cane, a substitute for her eyes. Her laboured breaths echoed about her, but aside from that and the tap of the cane, there wasn’t a single noise. The silence buzzed in her ears.

From what she could tell, the cave floor was level, covered in loose rocks and plant matter and roughly circular, with a tunnel leading off in one direction. A breeze flowed that way, but she didn’t dare venture deeper or she might lose her way. She would need to wait for light.

At least there were no people here, and it wasn’t too cold.

Kit slept soundly for a few hours curled up against the rock, until the tendrils of day reached her. Light didn’t bring much fortune.

She crushed a wave of despair before it could rise in her chest. There was no way out. The outcrop her rope hung from was in fact a jagged column of rock, reaching up into the cavern at a strange angle. She had been incredibly lucky to hit it. Above that, the walls narrowed into an overhang that was utterly unclimbable all the way up to the hole in the roof. No hope of getting out that way.

Worse was the cave itself. The leaves she had felt turned out to be a bed of drooping, sickly yellow flowers like nothing she had ever seen, growing in the beam of light from above. The circular growth gave the unnerving impression that they had been planted that way on purpose. Their petals were wide and pallid, unnervingly shiny and giving off a cloying perfume. Like rotting flesh, her mind supplied.

Amongst the flowers were bones. Some deer or fox, but mostly human. She realised with a shiver that she’d been running her hands over them in the dark, mistaking them for rocks. They were all picked clean of sinew or muscle. Skulls were often smashed.

A closer inspection showed tiny, evenly-spaced gouges across their surfaces. Perhaps it was hopeful, to think that animals came down here to scavenge on the fallen bodies. Maybe there was an entrance elsewhere?

The only choice was to push on. She pulled down the rope from its hook on the rock above, and wrapped it back up, slung over her torso again. She kept her thoughts forward-focused, away from the dread pooling deep in her stomach. Her injuries were slight, only bruises and scrapes. She was fine. She located the lighter in her pack, put it somewhere she could get to it easily, and gripped her trusty cane to combat the darkness.

▵▾▵▾▵

She could tell the tunnel wasn’t natural even in the dark. Smooth floor, angular columns, sturdy archways. Every step restored hope that she tried to keep at bay. No point being too optimistic.

More flowers here, from the fleshy feeling of them underfoot. She was deafened by the echo of rustling leaves and her own breath in the heavy air, so she didn’t notice the stranger until they called in a whisper:

“Hey!”

She was on all fours instantly, cane poised ready to strike anything within range. Her eyes were staring, useless. Her ears prickled as movement sounded to her left. An intake of breath.

...

“Are you a human?” They hissed.

The voice was childlike, raspy and wavering, perhaps mocking, perhaps afraid. They were close. She rumbled a growl to warn them away.

“You don’t sound like a human.”

“I’m human.” Her voice sounded hollow and alien to her. She didn’t have anyone to practice using it with nowadays. “I can’t see you.”

“Put the stick down.”

Were their eyes that accustomed to the dark? She could see nothing. She lowered the staff slowly. A rustle. She felt the clammy foliage shift beneath her hand. The voice was inches away when it spoke next.

“Did you fall down?”

She jolted backwards. The stranger giggled at her surprise. They were definitely a child, confirmed by the position of their voice, low to the floor. One of Kit’s hands was still on the end of her cane, while the other crept discreetly towards the pocket with her lighter. She huffed a calming breath.

“Obviously,” and then, searching for the memory of how to communicate properly, “did you fall too?”

“No, I live down here. But it isn’t safe for you.”

“Shocker. Is there a way out?” She felt a little cruel for being abrupt with them, but kindness was a luxury she couldn’t afford when her skin was tingling with distrust. Her fingers brushed the metal of the lighter.

“There’s a way out… eventually.”

“Can you show me?” She gripped the lighter, inched it out of the pocket.

“No.”

“Why?” She hissed out at the dark, listening for the exact origin of the voice.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Better than starving.”

“Maybe. But starving down here is better than being eaten.”

...What?

She drew the lighter and flicked the cap, shutting her eyes against the light. The other person shrieked in genuine, absolute terror. She couldn’t help herself. She looked. Her heart clenched.

She thought she must be mistaken.

Shining in the flickering light was a frill of those slimy yellow petals. In the middle was one huge, watery green eye, pupil constricted against the light. Below it, a row of little sharp teeth. Perfect match for the marks on all those bones, she thought, before it folded up into the ground, and was gone.

▵▾▵▾▵

She couldn’t let it get to her. It was a trick of the firelight, reflecting on the leaves of those horrible plants. It wasn’t real. Her cane tapped urgently along the cave floor. She wanted to abandon her caution, to run from the room with the flowers, but the threat of unseen chasms ahead kept her pace slow.

Whatever it was back there, she prayed it wasn’t coming back.

The path was impeded soon after, and she again had to push down her dismay. The tunnel had brought her up a set of stone steps to a dead end. She growled low in frustration, and began the painstaking search for an exit. She scraped the cane along the walls, back and forth over every inch. The noise of it was beginning to grate on her, just when it bounced and caught on something. She reached her hands out.

Here, the wall was jagged, broken. A breeze was filtering in through the gaps. Perhaps the doorway had collapsed? There was no way she could fit through there. A bit more searching located a way through, halfway up the wall, perfectly square and about a foot wide. She swallowed her apprehension. This was the only way forward, and she was not going back to the flowers.

She tied her pack and rope to one ankle. Her cane went into the passage before her. Tap, tap, tap. The tunnel continued evenly, but she would only just fit through the space. She took a deep breath, the last one she might be able to take for some time, and pulled herself into the gullet of the rock.

It wasn’t too bad until she was in up to her hips. There she met resistance, the widest part of her lodging in the space. She managed somehow, wriggling to position herself at a diagonal, breathing quick and shaky with the effort, trying not to make too much noise. Dust was creeping into her eyes, so she shut them. Nothing to see anyway.

She had to move just by wiggling - locking her arms against the sides of the hole, dragging herself forwards a few inches, shimmying her torso, then bending her knees enough to caterpillar along. It was exhausting, panicking, but she focused on the repetitive method. She’d been through worse spots back in the collapsed buildings of the city, she told herself. Thank goodness for her slight stature.

The cane kept tapping the walls with no change in sound. Her shoulders were agony from being forced forwards, and her core muscles pleaded for her to stop moving, but she refused, ignoring the ache. If she stopped, she might not be able to start moving ever again. If she could see, she was sure her vision would be failing from lack of oxygen. Fear welled like tar in her throat. Where was the end?

“You’re going to die down here~” Came a singsong voice from right behind. That flower thing. It must be in the tunnel with her. Her breathing hitched and she felt tears brim up.

“Fuck you.” She spat, the words coming hoarse.

The reply was merely a cackle of glee. She kept going. Pretended it wasn’t there. Wiped away the tears on her arm. The cane failed to hit a wall, and relief brought more tears to her eyes. One more caterpillar-wiggle and her hands were free, the rest of her pulling through easily after.

She fell to the floor, crumpled there, letting oxygen return to her half-starved muscles.

She didn’t ever want to go back through that tunnel.

Chapter Text

Mother of all monsters.

It seemed lighter here. Perhaps Kit’s eyes were finally adjusting, or maybe she had suffered lasting damage from the lack of air during her claustrophobic experience, but she could see shapes looming around her. Testing, she lifted her cane up towards them. Tap, tap-tap. Definitely solid objects.

That tiny amount of light made all the difference to her exploration. She was aware of the urgency of escape - there would be no food sources down here, and she could feel the first creeping pangs of hunger. Three days since she ate. She needed to press on as fast as possible.

The next room was flooded, but the water was refreshingly cool, and after checking it was clear by flamelight she washed her face and hands clean of rock dust and drank from her palm.

She made good progress from there; more alert with a bellyful of cold water sating the void in her stomach.

Strangely, she came upon a room where the floor was covered in rusted metal spikes, some missing or halfway depressed into the floor. A weird sort of trap? Luckily, the spikes were wide-set and corroded, and she clambered across by simply treading over them, having to take her time and test each one she stepped on.

While picking her way along, checking for more traps in a completely straight corridor that went on for far too long, she was sure she heard that giggling flower again. She didn’t see fit to turn around though. Whatever nasty little demon was hounding her could have its fun, she wasn’t afraid.

▵▾▵▾▵

The prolonged echo of a rockfall ahead caused her to stop. It didn’t sound big, but she really didn’t want to have to crawl through any more collapsed tunnels. Timidly, she peered into the next intersection, and could make out the corridor stretching to left and right. There was light here, a hole in the ceiling maybe?

Another clatter, and the light grew brighter, flickered, and lit up the hallway on the left. Not daylight - torchlight! The sound resolved into the shuffling movement of a person scrabbling about only metres away. Their broad silhouette was thrown long across the floor.

Crouched in shadow, Kit waited, assessed her options. The path to the right was clear of debris, and the darkness which had been an unceasing hindrance now seemed welcome compared to the blaze of a stranger’s torch. Staying low, she darted for the dark, around the right hand bend. The shuffling of the stranger stopped, and Kit stilled in response.

…

A huff of breath from the unknown scavenger, and then the clamour picked up again. Kit took her chance and rushed away, letting the torchlight guide her easily across the rubble-strewn floor, jumping a wide hole in the stone. The next room contained more spikes, but those in the centre were warped and crushed as if a boulder had fallen on them. She picked her way across, keeping up a steady pace.

The torchlight flared, rounded the corner behind her, throwing dancing shadows. Her heart leapt, and she forced herself to keep moving calmly, not to take flight: the torch would be limiting their vision, they likely couldn’t see her.

The ground ahead was cracked and uneven, thrown into ruddy contrast and warped by her own shadow. She had to slow down again, pick her footing. Here, then there, then onto the more stable ground at the side of the room, and then-...

The ground gave way easily, like it had been waiting for the right chance to swallow her up, the noise of cascading dust and loose rocks reverberating all along the tunnel.

This time, there was nothing to break her fall.

She did her best to react in time, instinctively clinging to her cane and curling up to protect her head, but still falling rocks dashed against her and the ground came up to meet her hard. Her vision went black.

When she came to, chest heaving and ears ringing, the torchlight was above her. She shook her head and instantly regretted it, gasping as a jolt of pain shot through her skull. Probably a concussion. Hopefully mild.

The stranger was speaking, but she couldn’t register the words. Dust and gravel fell from above, and she tried to move, but found her body resisting.

“...there now, I’m on my way, little one. Hold still.” The stranger kept talking, reassuring in a rich, rounded voice like honey and a summer breeze. Definitely female, too inviting, too sweet, too good to be true.

The torchlight faded, then reappeared, closer. All she could see was the glare of the flame and a pale shape looming behind, throwing strange shadows and tricking her blurry eyes. Panic settled on her. She had to get away. Other people couldn’t be trusted - they would take advantage of her. She’d be killed.

She closed her eyes. Darkness was a creature she knew well, and it would aid her here, where this stranger had been carrying that torch in front of her all along. She drew closer, her continued reassurances helping Kit keep track of her location. Closer. A little more.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m going to-”

Now!

She opened one eye enough to see the light, and lashed her foot out at it. The flame snuffed out, and the stranger gasped.

“Goodness me! Now don’t be naughty child, I’m trying to help you.”

Child? Hah! She opened her eyes again, gave her body a moment longer in the respite of shadow, and pushed up from the floor, wobbly limbs slipping on the loose rubble.

There was an exhale of breath from the stranger, and the flame burst back to life instantly. Not atop the shaft of a torch, or in the glass dome of a lantern. No. In the palm of a large, furry paw. Her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Not this time. One trick of the light could be overlooked, but this?

Over eight feet tall, dirty white fur and torn robes that might once have been a pretty purple. A head like a goat, large curling horns, and pale green-blue eyes, glazed over like the creature might have been blind. A snout lined with small, distinctly carnivorous teeth. She was smiling genuinely, but it didn’t reach those wide, staring eyes.

“That wasn’t very nice.”

The monster reached out a hand, and Kit growled warningly, swung her cane to ward the beast away. The staff was caught and snatched away with incredible ease, now looking like a toothpick in the paw of the goat-woman.

“Now, now, none of that. Goodness, how troublesome.” She sounded faintly amused.

The creature stood, her horns grazing the low ceiling in the cavern, and Kit was swiftly bundled up under one furry arm before she could retaliate. She screamed in rage, drove her elbow into the creature’s back, but the goat seemed not to even notice. She clambered back up through the gap in the roof, prey securely clamped to her side.

No matter how she struggled, Kit could do nothing. Her head was throbbing, and it quickly became clear that she would only tire herself out by fighting. It was pointless. She might do herself more damage from fighting back, so she went limp, pretending to be unconscious.

She could hardly keep track of what turns the goat was taking, and at some point she really did lose consciousness. The concussion must have been worse than she thought.

▵▾▵▾▵

She floated up to consciousness again in a bundle of fabric. A bed? She sat up slowly, looked about. Yes, a real bed, in a real bedroom with a pretty lamp lit on the bedside table. The air was heavy and warm, and smelled faintly of baked goods and woodsmoke. She had soft sheets and a pillow, too. No more wet rock and rotting flowers.

The bedroom was clearly designed for a child, with colourful decorations, a small bed, soft toys scattered about, and drawings tacked to the walls. It was incredibly well-kept. She marvelled at the lamp on the table, which seemed to be a working electronic one. Functioning electronics and a source of power? That was a rare occurrence nowadays. 

After stretching her aching limbs and performing a thorough search of the room, she found the inevitable complication.

The door was blocked. No keyhole to lock it with, but it wouldn’t budge. Of course it wouldn’t be as simple as being rescued from inevitable death by a nice, non-psychotic goat monster. The creature had trapped her in here, either that or she had become so weak that she couldn’t pull the oversized door open.

She waited for a while, on the bed, just listening. The kidnapper (ha ha) was somewhere nearby - Kit could hear some clamour of movement outside the room. Her leg bounced impatiently. It was clear nobody was coming to let her out. Was this what that flower had been talking about, when it said it was too dangerous further into the cave? That she might be eaten? Well, she was still kicking for now. She’d show that flower asshole.

She had to keep herself sane until she was released from the pretty little prison, so she took stock. Her equipment was missing - boots, jacket, rucksack, cane and climbing rope all gone - her captor must have taken them. She still had her lighter though, in the pocket she’d stowed it in earlier. It was a small blessing, since she was sure that someone who could conjure fire in their hand wouldn’t be especially phased by a lighter.

She tried not to think too hard about the actuality of monsters. She’d encountered two very different, very fantastical beings in the first hour or two of cave exploration. Surely people would know if there were creatures like that right outside the city? There would be rumours, at least?

Trying to rationalise it sent her brain into a spiral. She had no way to be certain whether or not any of this was real, or if she had put herself in a coma in the fall, and was now in some kind of torpor-induced nightmare. She flicked her lighter open and held her palm over the flame. It still felt real, but how could she be sure?

She shook off those thoughts and stood to search the room. In the wardrobe she located her old grey jacket, which had been hung up amongst a selection of clothes in different sizes, none of which looked anywhere near large enough for the goat lady. Weird. Weird, and just a little bit creepy.

In a cabinet, she found one of the truest treasures of the world - clean, undamaged socks. She put them on straight away, ridding herself of her old worn ones and layering several pairs of the new garments on top of one another. She didn’t care if they were someone else’s - she needed them more. Besides, who owned over ten pairs of perfectly good socks in today’s society?

The next thing to occupy herself with was checking her injuries properly. It seemed like she had been left to her own devices for now, so she unwound her knee and hand wraps and stripped off her muddy combats, green shirt, and baselayer.

Her ribs were a nasty purple, but there was no blood or sign of internal damage. There was a decent graze on her hip which would blend in in no time with the multitude of scars on her skin. She was proud of them, especially the bigger ones. They proved her will to survive, and toughened her skin against future injuries.

Reassuringly, she hadn’t wounded her head too badly in the second fall, as far as she could feel through her matted hair. Her hands were raw where the wraps hadn’t protected them, and her right wrist made an odd noise when she rolled it, but what was new there? She tried to remember if she had done herself any other damage during her day of misadventure.

Had it been only a day? How long had she slept for?

There wasn’t a window in the bedroom, so she could only assume she hadn’t been out that long, judging by the raw state of her cuts and bruises. She slipped back into her clothes and tied the cloth wraps securely again. They were getting pretty grim. If she could find her rucksack, she’d be able to tear up that nice fresh cotton she found and make some new ones.

Footsteps approached. She quickly shrugged on her jacket. The distinct sound of something being dragged away from the door. In a moment, her mind was made up: she would play along with her captor. Two could pretend to be sweet and trustworthy.

The goat woman opened the door. The hinges creaked, of course, and her captor’s smile was slightly too wide for Kit’s liking.

“Ah, my child, did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” her voice cracked a little, “much better than I have in a long time. Thank you.”

The unnerving smile got wider.

“Wonderful. I am so glad, you did seem rather unwell when I found you.” She opened the door wider and crouched down to the human’s height. “I have prepared a meal for you. It pains me to see such a dear, sweet creature so malnourished.”

▵▾▵▾▵

On the outside, it looked like a perfectly good pie, round and golden and steaming, even if the smell was a little bit odd. How bad could it be?

As soon as the goat cut into it, those horrible, stinking yellow flowers cascaded out from the wound in a viscous slop, smelling even more putrid than they had in life. She hated those flowers. She was sure she would never rid her memory of their smell. Her stomach turned - she would rather be eaten by that carnivorous flower than have to eat the flowers themselves.

She ate a tiny amount to keep up the facade of compliance, picking the pastry away from the sludge and nibbling at it. It tasted of ash, sticky and flavourless, making her mouth dry. Every bite brought back memories of a single watery eyeball, staring on mockingly.

You’re going to die down here~

The goat had cleaned her own plate swiftly. Kit tried to excuse herself by saying that she had a very small appetite since she was only a tiny human; hoping that the creature didn’t know any better. The goat’s unnerving pale eyes narrowed.

“You won’t get any bigger if you don’t eat your fill. Go on, just a little more. For me?” The monster actually batted her eyelashes. How could a creature be so elegant and so awful all at once?

Kit had no choice. She couldn’t risk putting up a fight. She had to appear to be meek to keep her only advantage - deception. She cut away a small mouthful of leaf-slop with the edge of her fork - she hadn’t been given a knife. The plant matter came away stringy and refused to cut cleanly through. She tried not to gag.

Somehow, she managed to eat the mouthful, holding her breath so the smell didn’t hit her. She couldn’t stop the taste though, sour, acrid, and sticking in her throat. As she tried to swallow, her mind presented her with the question of whether all the flowers down here were sentient. She downed a plastic cup full of water she had been given to stop herself from retching.

The goat looked satisfied now.

“Thank you for the food, ma’am.” Kit did her best to put on a convincing smile of her own.

“Please call me Toriel, and you are welcome, my child.”

Ugh. She needed to get out of here.

Technically, the goat had done nothing to her except lock her in a child’s bedroom and confiscate any of her belongings that could be considered dangerous… and then tried to feed her something that she was sure wasn’t edible to humans.

Maybe Kit was overreacting to the sudden encounter with a fantastical beast? Could Toriel just be a little bit unhinged? She definitely wasn’t the craziest person Kit had met. Kit didn’t dare to hope that she might be a decent person who just didn’t know any better. It was worth a shot, right? Play it safe, and she might get out of this alive.

“Toriel, could I have my things back?” She could see her rucksack, staff, and rope from here, perched out of reach atop an overfilled bookcase.

“Why, whatever do you need those nasty things for? You aren’t going to need them here.”

“But they’re mine. I really would like them back.”

“I’m afraid I don’t feel comfortable giving them back to you. Some of those things look rather dangerous, and you have already proven how violent you can be. It’s for both our safety.”

“They aren’t dangerous, I promise. I need them for when I’m travelling.” She tried to put it gently, to make the suggestion that she wasn’t staying without saying it outright. Her hands were shaking, so she sat on them.

“You don’t need to travel any more.” Toriel’s voice went cold, to match the ice of her eyes. Kit repressed a shiver at the sudden change in atmosphere.

“It’s very kind of you to invite me to stay...” She spoke every word gingerly, stepping out onto that thin ice. “But I have to get somewhere before winter falls.”

Somehow, that made the goat laugh. Her needle-teeth reflected the light from the fireplace. Her laugh was too high, too sharp to be genuine, almost bitter somehow.

“If you want to avoid the winter, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. The only way out is through the snow.”

What’s that supposed to mean? Kit wanted to say. She bit her lip.

“Way out? Of the forest you mean?”

“No, little one.” Toriel’s voice became grave. “The way out of the Underground.”

“What?” She had to measure her volume, heart rate increasing. “Are we still underground?”

“Unfortunately,” she shook her head sadly, “and it’s far too dangerous beyond my home for a little thing like you. You’d be dead within a day, and even if you weren’t, there’s no simple way out.”

“But… someone... told me there was a way out of the tunnels.” The despair was clear in her voice.

“That flower?” Kit nodded, and Toriel’s expression soured. “If I could only catch him, I would cook that soulless weed up.”

She lifted her knife, and plunged it down hard into the carcass of the pie. Kit had to clench every muscle in her body to stop herself from startling. Toriel continued, anger bubbling now beneath her words.

“If you couldn’t recognise that that demon merely wanted to play with his food, then you don’t stand a chance in the rest of the Underground.”

“Are there more… creatures like you there?” Kit tried to direct Toriel’s attention away from her growing anger.

“Like me? No.” Somehow, the sadness in her eyes became more genuine. It made her look older, tired. “There were others once. All gone now…” She trailed off, looking into the fire.

Genuine emotion - loneliness. A gap in her opponent’s defenses. Enough to make Kit’s insensitive heart stir in pity.

“I’m sorry, Toriel.” She meant it, too. She moved a hand across the table to where Toriel’s paw lay, and grasped it gently. “What happened?”

Toriel responded instinctively to the contact, enveloping Kit’s hand completely in her much larger fingers. They were stubby in proportion to her hand, nothing like a human hand at all.

“That is not a story I would want you to have in your head, child. Thank you, but I think it is time for you to return to bed.”

Kit’s heart hardened again. She was not going to be shut away in that weird little room again like a bird in a cage.

She slipped the other hand holding her fork from the table while Toriel was distracted by the comfort of her grasp. The fork was tucked discreetly under her leg wrap, against her thigh. Not much of a plan, but it was all she had. She hoped Toriel wasn’t too perceptive.

She was lead back across the hall, and she memorised everything she could about the neat and tidy house on the way. She should have realised something was odd about this place: so perfectly kept, no signs of age or rot, and not a single window. Not like the dilapidated buildings above ground.

There was an open staircase that went down. A front door opposite, with a key in the lock. Two other doors aside from the one that she was being lead back to by the hand Toriel was still holding. She noted that the object that had been dragged in front of the door was a wooden end table, oversized like the rest of the furniture. Her pulse increased. She would have to time this perfectly.

She waited until she had crossed the threshold, then turned back to Toriel.

“Toriel, please can I have my staff back?”

“No, child, I can’t let you have it.”

“It was a gift from my father,” she lied smoothly, knowing her captor’s weakness now, “it’s all I have left of him. Please, just the staff?”

She might have felt guilty, but she had to get out of this place. She always found a way to carry on. She had outlived her father despite his resilience and the survival skills he had passed on to her. She would fight to stay alive. It might cost her own morals, but she didn’t have any other option. At least she didn’t intend to cause Toriel any harm.

She watched the goat’s eyes soften.

“Alright, just the staff. But it stays in your room at all times, understood?”

Her room? She didn’t think so. Not for long at least. She watched Toriel head back towards the living room, and quickly slipped her hand down to draw the fork and tuck the prongs of it into the corner of the door frame, where they couldn’t be seen.

Toriel was back quickly, staff in hand, and she passed it over to Kit carefully.

“Now, it’s time to sleep. Goodnight, my child.” She gave Kit a fond look. Motherly. Almost convincing enough for her to change her mind. To want to stay here in this strange little house like Toriel wanted.

But she had to keep going.

“Goodnight Toriel. Thank you.” She gave Toriel a big, honest smile, which made the creature’s eyes crinkle at the corners. She really was grateful to her for letting her live this long, for being too generous in a world that preyed on generosity.

She promised herself to remember the kindness of this crazy old goat.

When Toriel shut the door, Kit kept the fork in place with her foot, using it to wedge the door open ever so slightly. She turned the doorhandle, making it click so that Toriel wouldn’t realise it hadn’t shut properly. She heard the sound of the cabinet being pushed in front, and just as it made contact with the door, she pushed back just a little, giving herself a few millimetres of vital extra space.

▵▾▵▾▵

She waited a long while after that. Her stomach was beginning to hurt from the meal, and she tried not to think about whether those flowers were poisonous, whether that had been Toriel’s intention all along.

She collected her thoughts, double-checked the room for anything else of use, and then napped to make the most of the bed while she still had it. She was good at catnaps - it was the only safe way to get any sleep in the city, when you could be attacked at any moment.

After several hours of fitful sleep, she returned to the door. The fork was still wedged fast between the door and its frame. She would only get one shot at this. If she screwed it up, she was done for - at best Toriel would never trust her again, and at worst she would be killed.

She braced her shoulder against the door, and then positioned the staff ready. With the flat of her foot, she put as much force as she could into levering the corner of the door with the fork. With the tiny amount of extra space she managed to wedge the butt of the staff into the gap. From there, she had to use all her meagre weight and the leverage gained from the staff to painstakingly inch the door open, quietly, slowly pushing the cabinet away. The fork dropped to the floor, and she snagged it and secured it back under her leg wrap. Any advantage might be useful here.

Partially thanks to the carpeted floor in the corridor, she managed to open the door enough to slip out without making any noise. She shut the door behind her, and rocked the cabinet back into place. It would give her more of a head start if Toriel didn’t notice she was missing.

All the lights were out in the corridor. She slipped on her boots as she crossed the lobby, having to loosen them off first to fit the extra pairs of socks padding her feet. She tried the front door. Locked of course, and the key gone. It could be anywhere in the house. She crept along silently, up to the living room entrance. No light in there except for the embers in the fireplace. She was in luck.

She searched the room as much as she could, checking under the cushions of the lone armchair and under the empty vase on the table. No key here. She padded to the bookshelf and with the help of her cane, she managed to get her rucksack down and shrug it onto her back.

Next was the climbing rope. She hooked it with her staff and pulled gently, but the thing betrayed her as expected, uncoiling and threatening to slide down from its perch. She stiffened and quickly angled the staff so that she could catch the rope when it fell. It took some time and internal cursing to get the thing in order before she could loop it over her body.

She investigated the kitchen thoroughly, but aside from that nightmare pie there was nothing worth taking. The drawers were all locked, which struck Kit as odd. If Toriel lived alone, why would she want to lock the kitchen drawers unless… unless there was a reason she had a children’s bedroom in perfect condition, a reason all the clothes in the wardrobe were different sizes, and a reason she had a habit of calling Kit ‘child’.

Just don’t think about it. She shook it off. On her way back through the living room, she noticed a pen lying on the table. The impulse struck her to take it, but as she picked it up another thought came to her. She pulled down a hardback from the shelf that had one of those paper covers, which she removed and folded inside out.

As neatly as she could in the dark with her spidery handwriting, she left a note:

Toriel,

I have to go. I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay with you.
You were very kind to me and I hope you don’t hate me for leaving.
If I make it out of here, I’ll bake a pie in your honour.

Thank you,

Kit.

She didn’t know if it was kinder this way, or if it just made the whole thing worse. She was abandoning this half-mad creature alone in a cave, after all, but she wasn’t going to live out her life eating poison-flower pie and getting locked away every night just because Toriel thought she couldn’t survive on her own.

Moving on, she returned to the lobby and checked everywhere she could think that someone might hide a key. Still nothing. The place was so neat and minimalist that she trusted that she hadn’t overlooked it in any of the rooms she had checked. Perhaps Toriel had it with her?

She stared down the hallway. She really didn’t want to have to try those two unchecked doors and risk waking Toriel up. Maybe she could find another way out.

The only other option was the staircase. She crept down, crouching every now and then to peer into the shadows below. She couldn’t see or hear anything, so she pushed on into the dark. A long tunnel, smooth cut stone stretching off out of sight just like the others she had come across. Perhaps this lead back the way she had come? She carried on into the dark, just to check.

The tunnel was longer than the others, empty and echoing. A chilly breeze played around her feet as she walked. Several minutes in, with her trusty cane casting back and forwards ahead of her, she began to wonder whether she was caught in some kind of infinite hallway, a monster-fashioned labyrinth to stop hapless humans from escaping.

Just as she was contemplating what sort of monsters might have carved this hallway, the shadows ahead resolved, and the end of the corridor came into view. A huge door was set on impossible stone hinges, geometric runes carved deep into the granite.

Light shone in in fine silver rays around the edges of the door. The way out.

She rushed up to it, pleading, hoping, praying that it wasn’t locked, pressing her palms flat against the surface. The rock was surprisingly cold. When she pushed on the it, the door felt like it wouldn’t budge for anything; like it hadn’t moved since it was built.

She gave up, and stood back assessing.

Shit.

With a low growl she barged the door, heaving her full weight against it in a last desperate attempt at freedom, cursing at it to let her out. With a ponderous rumble it gave way, swinging open and catching her off balance.

She was deposited with a gasp, as Toriel had warned, into a three foot deep snowdrift.

Chapter Text

A false sense of security...

Kit had to hold in a yelp as the mound of snow absorbed her, instantly soaking through her jacket and hand wraps.

How?

How could it be snowing? There’s no way it was that cold. Even for Ebott it was far too early in the year for this volume of snow. It couldn’t have settled that quickly. Had she somehow lost a whole month in that cave? Could she have fallen into a coma in that child’s bed? She scrambled up and looked about, sinking up to her knees in the drift.

Around her, a clearing of silent, snow-laden pine trees stood undisturbed. No footprints or blemishes marked the snow. A grinding sound behind made her turn just in time to see the stone door swing closed again under its own weight. Good riddance. Wherever she was now, she was free of that horrible cave and its crazed inhabitants. She’d be happy to forget all about it. She’d take freezing to death over being poisoned, or eaten.

Kit rubbed her stomach. The ache from eating those flowers was still there but fading, thankfully. If she’d eaten any more she would likely be in agony by now.

Time to find somewhere to shelter. She would have to be very careful not to fall into any drifts or tree wells as she explored. This sudden shift in weather made the forest utterly unrecognisable. She must have travelled several miles from the city via those tunnels.

▵▾▵▾▵

The first clue was the wildlife, or lack thereof. Most creatures might be hibernating, but the native grouse should be audible even late into the winter. Every year, Kit made a killing from the ground-dwelling birds at the edge of the forest. This far in, they should be more common, but she had yet to scare one up as she travelled, and there wasn’t a single animal track to be seen.

Her first thought was that she might be close to some kind of encampment - that the grouse population had been depleted by hunting here - but the forest was as close and desolate as an ancient graveyard, with no signs of people anywhere.

The second clue was the weather. No wind, not even a whisper, the snow-laden branches so still that hardly a snowflake fell from them in all the time she walked. She stayed clear of the path, skirted the treeline where the snow was shallower, tried to travel in the direction she thought was south. Her legs stung where the damp fabric of her trousers clung to her.

She began to worry that she might not find her way back to the city at all. The forest could stretch on for hundreds of miles, and she would never know if she was walking in the right direction. Was she facing north when she fell into that cavern? Or was it west? She looked up, squinting between the gaps in the canopy. Just clouds. Mottled, dim and reddish.

Was it sunset? She changed course back to the treeline. If she could see where the sun was setting, she could at least orientate herself. She cleared the canopy, out into the deeper snow, and had to catch herself against the nearest trunk when she looked up. Her mind tripped up and her breath was stolen away as she tried to rationalise.

There was no sky . The reddish-grey overhead was a roof of solid stone, visible through a layer of clouds perhaps thousands of feet above. She plopped down into the snow where she stood. She felt sick.

How could it still be a cave?

There was daylight - dim, mimicking the light of a winter afternoon. She could see the texture of the rock far above, and now that she noticed it, the source of the lighting itself was a bit… off somehow. Fake. Ethereal.

It made no sense. There were trees growing and snow on the ground and surely she couldn’t have travelled down far enough to find a cave like this, there was just no possible way she was still trapped. Trees don’t grow underground, they don’t, it… it wasn’t possible… it can’t …

She had to dig her hands into the snow and take charge of her breathing, her lungs constricting painfully.

Enough.

This wasn’t like her at all. Kit was good at difficult, even better at impossible. It had been impossible when she and her siblings made it through their first winter without their parents. Impossible when she escaped a kidnapping at fourteen years old. Impossible for any of humanity to survive as long as they had.

The challenge presented by impossibility was a driving force. Being told something wasn’t possible, that it couldn’t be done, made it all the more enticing.

A forest was growing in this cave. It was snowy. There were clouds. Those things were impossible, yet here they were. So, what comes next?

Survival, and warmth, she thought.

Kit walked parallel with the trees this time, away from the stone door and the previous set of caves. At least with a ceiling this high it was unlikely she would have to crawl through a one-foot tunnel again.

Within a minute or two, she came to a strange structure over a chasm. Wooden struts reached up from below, criss-crossing at different angles over a rickety footbridge. Some of the poles had spikes on them, or chains hanging between. It appeared to be some kind of makeshift trap or barrier.

Kit raised a brow. She could easily slip between those poles, that wasn’t going to stop anyone. The bridge was mostly clear of snow, as if someone had been along and swept it just recently. Actually, she noted that the snow on the opposite side of the chasm appeared disturbed, perhaps by footprints.

Rather than cross over immediately, she climbed up, using the chains and spikes to get to a lookout spot atop it. She had a better vantage from here, and could see that the path continued into the distance. There was a track ahead, clearly well-used as the snow in the centre of the path was muddied and shallow. The footprints along it were largely humanoid, but inhumanly large.

That was... unsettling. She looked back the way she’d come, and was glad that her own footprints were hidden mostly below the trees, only visible if you were looking for them.

She clambered down from the structure, a frayed thread of her hand wrap getting caught in a chain and forcing her to tear the thing apart to get it loose. She tried her best to salvage it, but the raggedy, stained piece of fabric wasn't worth keeping for much. It might make a decent firelighter.

Another structure ahead caught her eye. This one was buried under snow, only visible thanks to the overhang of its roof. A little shack, really just a roof and three walls.

The snow around it was recently disturbed with more of those oversized prints. Toriel had said there weren’t monsters like her any more, but when Kit pressed her boot into one of those prints, it made her own foot look like a child's. She doubted that any human could be that big.

She pulled her foot away and crunched around to the open side of the cabin. It had a floor of wooden planks, stained and rotting with age. The window in the front wall had a sort of shelf built into it which was free of snow, decorated with countless gouges in the wood.

If it weren’t for the obvious signs of people she would be happy to shelter here. The overlap of the sill made a secure little alcove beneath. She slid down to sit in the alcove with her back to the wall, hoping to give her clothes some time to dry out, and to come up with a better plan than aimlessly walking.

A blemish on the ceiling made her focus. Writing, scrawled in rounded letters above the window:

‘one day at a time’

Someone else just trying to get by. She appreciated the sentiment.

She shouldn’t stay long. The person who owned this little shed was probably still around; even if the place didn’t look like someone’s living space, it was obviously well-used. While she had somewhere dry to sit, she propped her cane against the wall, shrugged off her rope and rucksack, and pulled it open in front of her to retrieve the new cloth.

With the help of her pocketknife, she tore the cloth into long strips. It was sturdy cotton, much better than the old bandages she had been wearing. She replaced the old hand and leg wraps, taking comfort in the soft fabric against her sore palms and slipping the stolen fork back inside one of the wraps when they were secure - just in case her cane and knife were lost.

The old wraps joined the one already in her pack. As she put them away, her hand brushed the foil packaging of her food rations. She shouldn’t eat yet. She wasn’t too far gone, she needed to save the non-perishable food for if things got really bad.

Instead, she made herself drink all the water left in her waterskin, and then she shovelled snow into it until she couldn’t pack any more in. It should melt if she kept it close to her body, so at least she wouldn’t die from dehydration in this environment.

She packed up, moved on quickly, walking in the oversized footprints to disguise her own and to avoid having to cut a fresh path through the deeper snow.

The road ahead split into a junction. Kit halted in her tracks, torn between the undisturbed left-hand trail which lead down a slope, and the direction the footprints continued; the easy way forwards. As much as she would prefer to follow the path that some other survivor had cleared for her, and carry on avoiding soaking her legs with snowmelt, she didn’t like the cut of their boots.

There might have been a time when judging someone on their looks was wrong, but she knew her own weakness. A person with shoes that big had to be massive. She wouldn’t match up to anyone like that, and the risk of meeting someone dangerous outweighed the hope of meeting someone kind.

She took the slope, treading the treeline again, keeping the path in sight. Once, a noise made her stop, listening intently. Rustling. Not wind. She ducked down, frantically peering between treetrunks, knees in the snow.

She waited a long while before she stood back up, feeling sheepish at her paranoia. Her thigh muscles complained, aching in a way that was so intense that it was almost audible. Cold already. She would need to find somewhere to dry off, and she couldn’t afford to keep stopping like that.

▵▾▵▾▵

The path ended at a river. It was sluggish from the cold, but not frozen, which suggested a strong current below. The banks cut away to slick rock and bare roots. It was flowing to the right; the direction she was travelling. This at least gave her a landmark to find if she got turned around.

A sound echoed out ahead, sparking a kind of primitive fear that very few things could. A savage, tearing growl. She dropped to her front, flat into the snow.

When the sound continued, she peeked out. Stray dogs, fighting in a clearing over a scrap of mangled… something, ripping at each other and baring their teeth, kicking up the drifts. She drew her knife into the hand not holding her cane, just to make herself feel better. If the dogs chased her down, she wouldn’t stand a chance of fighting them off - they looked big, lean. The kind of dogs that survived just fine without masters. She made ready to give them a wide birth.

There was a crescendo in the clamour, and then:

“Hey! Stop it!” Came a voice. Commanding, gruff, female. Their owner?

Nope. It was another dog. Standing up, bipedal like a person. The other two quickly ceased their fighting, and the larger of the two stood on his hind legs, helping the smaller to his feet.

“We’re all hungry,” continued the speaker. “I know it’s hard, but this doesn’t help anyone. Don’t waste your energy.”

The shorter dog put a paw on his opponent’s shoulder.

“Sorry ‘Amy… Guess I lost it there for a sec.”

“I get it bud,” the other replied sadly, “trust me, it makes us all crazy.” He motioned his muzzle towards the ceiling.

The first to speak stepped up to the others, taking the paw of the taller one.

“It’s like Papyrus said. We just gotta take it a day at a time.”

That statement brought visible sadness to the other two. The taller tipped his head to rest on the female’s shoulder with a heavy sigh that steamed in the air, while the shorter shook his head, round dark eyes dropping to stare at the floor.

They were so much like people, not animals at all. Kit almost wanted to call out to them. What for? To ask for directions in the hope that the carnivorous beasts wouldn’t just turn on her?

“Come on.” The female spoke up again, taking the paw of the shorter dog too. “Where did you get to with the traps? I’ll help you.”

The female lead the other two away, back towards the path in the direction Kit was calling ‘south’. The three walked paw-in-paw, subdued, shoulders slumped.

There was no sign that the dogs had noticed her, but Kit moved swiftly until she had made a decent distance from the clearing, repeatedly glancing back to check over her shoulder. She had to navigate some tricky cliffside terrain, and cross the main path once more. In this part of the forest, canine footprints replaced the large humanoid ones.

When she was navigating a steep hillside with the help of her cane, she heard the trio talking on the ridge above and had to hide below a rickety, precarious footbridge, holding her breath until they passed overhead.

Later, she came to a ravine. A tributary of the river cascaded down, the freezing spray reaching up and hanging strange little red-spectrum rainbows between the two cliffs. It didn’t look real. Too beautiful, too surreal, she’d never seen anything like it.

She took her time crossing. She probably could have found another way, but climbing on the bare rock would give her some respite from the snow slowly sapping her warmth. She stowed her cane beneath her rucksack straps and wrapped her rope around a tree, creating a hitch so that she could recover the rope from the other side.

It was an enjoyable climb if not for how the rock bit her freezing fingers. In places, the two cliffs were so close together that she could bridge between them, back against one wall and feet braced against the other.

She stopped like that, shook out her arm muscles and clenched her tingling fingers, and stared upwards, leaning her head back against the cliff. A sliver of sky was visible above, still that mottled red-grey. It threw her off, made it feel like the world had been frozen in eternal evening, never getting to night.

She had a vague memory of a story like that, she thought, from before the war. A frozen world, always winter… with talking animals too? She couldn’t remember. There wasn’t time to read books any more, and most of the technology had failed many years ago, leaving huge gaps in humanity’s culture and history.

Perhaps one day she would find somewhere to live where she could actually read books rather than using them as kindling. She could even have a generator of her own, and a television and electronic lights, like the ones she remembered from her childhood. What a thought!

Enough fantasising now - her legs had gone stiff again. She shifted her position and began climbing, and she was across the ravine in good time. She supposed that since the light wasn’t changing, she might not need to worry about finding shelter before dark.

On this side of the ravine, the pine trees were tall and overbearing, the canopy probably a hundred feet above and so thick that there was next to no snow on the ground. The trunks had grown so close together in some cases that Kit had to turn sideways to slip between them. They must be very old.

Thanks to the canopy it was almost like dusk in here, gentle on her eyes, just enough to see the way. It felt safe, especially since she was sure those dogs would struggle to traverse this terrain.

As good a place as any.

With some difficulty, she shimmied up between two trunks until she reached the lowest branches. At this point, the trees fought for space and blocked out all available light, creating natural bridges and ladders. It was an ideal place to set up camp.

She found a spot against one of the trunks where two branches created a kind of scoop, then returned to the ground and threw her rope around a knot in the trunk to mark the tree. She slept soundly under the blanket she had brought with her, with her rucksack as a pillow, proud of her achievements for the day.

Before she fell asleep, she scratched a line into the trunk above her head. It was probably stupid, since there was no ‘night’ or ‘day’ for her to determine the passage of time, but she had to keep herself sane somehow.

▵▾▵▾▵

On the second day, she emptied her rucksack of everything she was carrying, leaving her supplies safely in the treehouse. She went out to explore the forest, found some tiny, sour apples to eat and ignored their taste as she swallowed them down. A few days’ worth of the fruits went into her pack, as did some firewood that wasn’t too damp.

On the third day, she slept for a long time. The cold and the strange half-light were getting to her. Her lips were chapped and occasionally bled for no reason. Her head hurt constantly. Fearing frostbite, she managed to build a tiny fire at the base of the tree, using one of her old bandages to start it. She was better for the warmth, feeling returning to her fingers that had been numb and red since she got here.

She went back to the ravine to fill her waterskin and wash her face, and under the cover of the rushing water she sang to herself, just to check that her voice was still there, to fill the silence. She was beginning to feel like she had spent so much time sneaking about, being quiet, that she might forget how to speak one of these days; just wake up and find that she could no longer remember how to form words.

With somewhere safe to store her things, she could move more freely when exploring, and in that way she travelled further out from the edge of the forest. She left everything but her knife and cane, and began trekking in the direction she would call ‘east’.

There was a hawthorn tree at the border of the forest, and by some miracle it was in fruit. She gratefully ate some of the sweet berries as she passed it each day, spitting out the seeds, relishing the experience of a positive sensation.

On the sixth day, she found a settlement.

A band of the woods she had stumbled upon was absolutely covered in traps of every kind, from snares to deadfalls to bear traps. Beyond that deadly obstacle course was the village, once-pretty houses falling into disrepair. If it weren’t for the smoke coming from some of the chimneys, she might have thought the place was deserted. She lay in the snow and watched for some time. Once, she glimpsed a creature peering out through the window of a building.

After travelling outside the safety of the deep forest for a few days, she concluded that there was a day-night cycle of some sort. The light never faded completely, but it got dimmer and brighter in a regular pattern, and the village inhabitants clearly kept some kind of schedule. She took to travelling during the ‘night’, since it was still light enough for her to see by while most of the inhabitants were asleep.

There were no goat monsters here, but this place was definitely populated by some interesting types. During her time spent on the village outskirts, she saw the dogs from before, along with other animals; deer, birds, and bears, wearing clothes and walking on their hind legs. There were weirder ones too: she had been mesmerised at one point by a tiny crystalline creature playing about on its own in the snow.

They all had one thing in common though; there was something threatening about each one of them. Some of the monsters were so immense that Kit was sure she would stand at barely half their height. Teeth and claws were visible on even the fluffiest creatures, and the smaller, more vulnerable beings often boasted spikes or natural defences of some kind. It made Kit certain that she wouldn't survive being confronted by any of them.

The weather wasn’t getting any better. It snowed sometimes, enough to erase the footprints of the monsters and conceal their traps, making the woods more dangerous. It was just her luck, to find a place where the winter was even worse than it would have been on the surface. She took every advantage she could get from then on, memorising the positions of the traps around the village, working out the routines of the beasts that guarded the settlement.

There were several guard troupes that she had to work around. Firstly, the dogs, who seemed to be in charge of the forest and the traps set up within it. A variety of other creatures stayed near the boundary of the town to act as guards, with dangerously unpredictable patrol routes. Lastly, the source of the humanoid footprints that marked the main path: an enormous skeleton who trudged out into the forest every day, methodically checking the defences set up along the road.

That one was the most worrisome; it seemed that even the other monsters were nervous around the slow-moving, bulky creature who silently kept watch, with one bloody red light in place of an eye that cut through the twilight.

Kit felt very lucky to have avoided any messy run-ins in her first few days here, before she knew how many threats there were. The monsters were aggressive, even to each other, and they didn’t look much better off than her aside from the fact that they had a rudimentary community, and a way to combat the cold.

She was envious of their thick fur and secure houses but she couldn’t afford to let her emotions run loose. Anger, frustration, and jealousy were indulgent and could push her to act greedily, irrationally. They could get her killed.

She still felt pity for the poor, lean dogs with their scarred muzzles and big sad eyes, arguing amongst themselves out of desperation. She still felt heartache when a young monster sat in the snow and cried out of loneliness and hunger. She was capable of empathising, but if it came to it, she knew she would steal from their traps to save herself.

It was something that Kit had seen before: people in survival situations lost their grip on kindness and compassion once pragmatism and selfishness kicked in. Kit was no different.

She was alone, she had nobody to cast judgement on her actions - at least the monsters had each other. Her hair was matted to her head, and her skin had so much dirt ingrained into it that she thought it might never wash out. She felt barely human, more feral than those dogs who somehow found the ability to laugh, to joke with each other.

She couldn’t remember what that felt like; to have someone to lean on. To pull you back from the brink of madness when you stood too close to the edge. To remind you why you were still doing this after however many years.

Snow and hunger were the only constants, and snow was a deceptive ally, muffling her footsteps and boosting her vision in the low light just as it sapped her warmth and ate away at her limbs. It made her hate her flimsy body. She feared for her toes and fingertips, which had stopped responding to the warmth of the fire and held a permanent unfeeling pallor.

She didn’t lose hope though. Hope was something you had to keep ahold of. She was alive, if barely. She would get out somehow.

▵▾▵▾▵

In the end, it wasn’t the monsters that got her.

It was the fourteenth day. Just yesterday, Kit had found a rat whilst poaching from the monster traps, and put it out of its misery, thanking it for the life it would give her in return for its own. She had been satisfied, well fed and assured of her own capacity to overcome this place and wait out the winter. Now, it seemed that fate was trying to balance the scales.

It was snowing the hardest it had since she got here. The storm pierced the canopy, clung to her hair and clothes and refused to melt. Some of the older branches in the deep forest had begun to collapse around her under the increasing weight. Her treetop hideaway was fast filling like a bowl, and it wouldn’t be long before she found herself a living snow poff. She had to move.

She brought down all of her possessions, packed them all away and slung them resentfully across her back, berating herself for the false confidence she had indulged in. The rucksack felt heavier now.

The snow was coming in at such a rate that finding her way out of the deep forest was a trial all on its own. The density of the blizzard muffled all sound, blotted out all light. She couldn’t tell what time it was, it had grown so dark. She had to find shelter. She could only think of one place - the little wooden cabin.

Away from the town, and along the outskirts of the forest. She tried to find the river, and nearly found it with her feet as the snow streamed down in such volume that it was covering the surface of the water, building up faster than the river could melt it.

She had been walking too long, and she couldn’t find the cabin, too much doubling back and getting turned around, stumbling through the drifts aimlessly. Her feet were so numb, her hands even worse despite every attempt to keep them inside her clothing. There just wasn’t enough of her to withstand this vast quantity of ice.

She knew when she had found the path at least, because the snow there came up to her waist. She had to dig through it using her cane ahead of her. She thought she could see the shape of the cabin in the distance. So close now. Just keep pushing. The silence tricked her ears, her breath and the crunch of the snow were amplified by it. Every second was stretched thin and tenuous.

Her shadow was thrown in front of her, cast in red.

Kit twisted around wildly, staring through the veil. An orb, a single crimson searchlight rolling ponderously over the terrain, piercing through the gloom and turning the snow bloody where the light fell. Kit crouched into the trench she had made, for whatever good it would do her.

A low rumble. Like stone doors to forgotten tombs grinding closed forever, echoing somehow despite the deadening snow. Shuffling, slow and inevitable, gouging through the drifts as she lay there, unable to take action as fear drowned her mind.

Her lungs shut down, involuntarily cutting her breath short as if it would stop what was coming. She was found; it was too late.

The sound stopped, the light so close , throwing the trench into contrast. Silence but for the patter of snowflakes and deep, rough breathing somewhere above her. She felt like her heart would burst.

…

The skeleton crushed through the side of her snow-tunnel, another roar so loud and so deep that her body was shaken into action. She was upright and tearing away down the trench at a speed she didn’t think she was capable of with her heavy limbs. She turned a bend, and the light was before her, cutting her off.

She turned, frantic, tripped up, and there he was again. Her overclocked mind picked out visceral details. Red and blue, blood on ice, and a fractured black pit waiting to pull her in. He lunged, and somehow, she dodged. A hand as big as Kit’s head swiped at her, and she was sent flying.

She rolled, tasted blood, orientated herself, and quickly she was upright, her cane launching her through the snow that she now found herself running on top of. Why hadn’t she thought of this? She was light enough that she could run atop the drifts, the snowstorm scouring her face as she sprinted. Kit had seen that monster as he went about his daily routine. He was slow. There was no way he could catch her now.

She was back into the forest, not caring for direction, running downslope over uncertain ground. She slipped, her shoulder caught a tree and she went down hard, winded. She rolled with a grunt, trying to keep some momentum. She couldn’t stop for anything.

When she came face up again, a shriek was torn from her as the talons of the monster came down around her, ramming into the ground. That red light filled her vision completely. How, how could he have caught up?! His weight was bearing down on her, he was so big that he could crush her skull in his palm. His mouth was suddenly so close and his teeth grazed her throat, the rumble of his blood-rage resonating through her frame.

Her hand came up impulsively with her cane, and wood met bone, splintered down over her as the skeleton howled, stumbling away to the side, holding his skull. The red light was gone. The staff had struck him exactly over the spot where his skull was damaged, she realised. A lucky shot.

...

He wasn’t recovering.

Her mind raced with all the justifications to leave it be and run for her life. She had no reason to care. He had tried to kill her. He was obviously strong, he’d be fine. Despite it all, she faltered.

“I-I’m…” she coughed to clear the burning ice from her lungs, “I’m sorry, are you-?”

She was silenced by the crescendo of rage that uttered from deep within the beast. The light stuttered back into existence, and rolled over to her, piercing her straight through.

She didn’t need telling twice.

This time, Kit was fast enough. She pushed herself to keep going, overrode the urge to be sick. She couldn’t hear him any more, her breaths were short and wheezing, her heartbeat filled her ears. She was thinking only as prey, all her focus going into maintaining a full-tilt sprint over uneven ground.

She vaulted a tree trunk, and instantly sunk up to her thighs in a drift. Her leg caught on something. She yelped and pulled back but couldn’t get free. It took some time for the pain to pierce through the mask of adrenaline.

The jaws of the trap clamped shut.

Chapter Text

You're not leaving.

Sans lost track of the human amongst the throb of his skull. Curse humans, their easy violence and nimble bodies. His head pounded, his own unstable eyelight hindering his vision as it flickered in and out, streaming red tears and leaving blind spots where the human could easily attack again.

Too dangerous. His magic reserves were exhausted, he couldn’t catch the little beast now.

He would soon.

Nowhere she could go.

He tracked her scent, but couldn’t follow it well through the close-set trees. He’d find her, when the storm was over and her broken body turned up in one of their traps. They would eat well, then.

▵▾▵▾▵

It had been a fight to stay quiet, to wait it out. She lay in the drift, curled up around her left leg, pinned between the teeth of the trap. It had been forgotten about by the looks of it, rusted and stiff, jaws big enough to stop a rhino.

Kit could hear the monster tromping about nearby, looking for her, his footfalls snapping branches and his breath a steady growl. It was a trade-off between waiting for him to stop looking, and risking passing out in the snow. Her hands gripped her leg. It was throbbing so painfully that Kit almost wished he’d find her, put her out of her misery. The teeth were blunt, but they pinched and gnawed at her freezing skin.

By the time the monster left, Kit had lost sensation in the leg. It was a blessing, really, as she knew what came next. She pulled her sluggish body upright and placed one fist at either end of the trap’s jaws.

The springs were old, flat plates of bent metal, the trap clearly improvised by someone who only had a vague idea of what a foothold trap looked like. It took fifteen minutes of grunting, gritted teeth and stiff fists pressing down on the rusted metal before the jaws screeched and gave way enough for her to pull her leg free.

Getting out was more painful than getting in. The snow absorbed the moan she barely stifled as her ankle came loose.

She was eternally grateful to her battle-proven staff. It was several inches shorter now, the top splintered where it had made contact with the skull of the monster. It still helped to drag her on her ruined leg, back through the snow towards the path. She didn’t have time to feel guilty for the possible harm she had caused. She had priorities.

Kit slipped and instinctively put her wounded foot down, tears springing up and freezing on her cold-burned cheeks. She was sure she would die, or perhaps already was dead. It was a constant fight against her own psyche, to keep walking, to convince herself not to fall asleep in the storm.

She had been going the wrong way the whole time. When she thought she had been heading for the forest outskirts, she had actually been running straight towards the village. The structure she had thought was the wood cabin was in fact a house.

It was impressive she didn’t run into the jaws of a monster much sooner.

She was now south of the village. On all sides, the forest opened back up into vulnerable clearings with houses and structures. She lay under a tree and waited for the snowstorm to end. She was so cold that she was starting to feel warm.

▵▾▵▾▵

She managed for nearly five days.

It was hopeless, but she was persistent. She couldn’t leave the area of forest she was in, couldn’t manage more than a minute of walking before she had to rest, couldn’t risk trying to get past the monsters. They didn’t seem to bother with this little cluster of trees; it was inside the village boundary and probably not worth patrolling.

She had messily bound her leg. It was ugly and bruised where the teeth clamped down, the damaged ankle bloody and swollen. Meanwhile, her fingers had gone white and shiny. Frostbite. They would be beyond saving soon.

She could only move by the use of her cane, and she had gone through all the food she had left, including the tiny apples she had picked and her foil-wrapped rations. She was just barely alive, and she was especially aware of it for the fact that she could feel her limbs dying, giving up.

Not long now.

It really was a horrifying sensation. An awful way to go, she thought.

When she awoke on the nineteenth day, she knew it was the last.

Her vision was darkening at the edges. A strange sort of peacefulness had descended over her in the night, and she could no longer feel the cold. The snowflakes that landed on her skin didn’t melt. Her body must be the same temperature as everything else by now. She rolled onto her front where she lay, in a nest hollowed into the dirt and padded by her bloodied, sodden blanket.

From here, she could watch the village further up the slope. The monsters went about their business oblivious to their wounded prey, dying slowly only metres away…

One of the nearby houses belonged to the giant skeleton who had doomed her, and she watched with spite as he went about his business. There he went now, to do whatever it was he did every day, trudging out of the town with other monsters ducking their heads or turning away so he wouldn’t pay them any attention. They were afraid, too.

Her eyes drifted back to the house. He was the only one who ever came out. Was that useful? She couldn’t piece the thought together. Revenge? She could… ambush him maybe? No, he’d kill her so easily. She could steal his food… if he had any. Did skeletons eat?

Her focus roamed over the darkened windows of the house. Some lower panes were smashed or missing, like someone had tried to break in. Beside the house was a small shed. Only a few feet away. Her delirious mind formed a half-baked plan.

She dragged herself along, stumbling, abandoning her blanket to the forest and hoisting herself with what remained of her strength. Her muscles barely responded. She struggled to grip her staff. Somehow, she made it to the door, panting, only falling into the snow twice on the way. Against every odd, despite all the foul luck she had had, the door was unlocked.

It was marginally warmer here. In the gloom she looked about. A tool rack. A workbench. A shelf of dusty tins without labels. Please, please, by any god that is listening, let there be food. She knocked a rusted sickle down from the tool rack, desperately smashed a random tin against the edge until it burst. It had been food… at one point.

She couldn’t tell what the lumpy substance was, but she raised it to her mouth anyway and ate from the opening, cutting the corners of her mouth on the metal. She could only taste blood, but she assured herself the substance must be some kind of vegetable, stopped herself from gagging and swallowed it down.

If it killed her, at least it would be quicker than hypothermia. To think she had been worried about that flower pie that the nice goat lady had made her. She should have stayed in the cute little cottage with the fireplace and the soft bed...

Hmm… Sleep. Sleep sounded wonderful.

▵▾▵▾▵

He could smell the blood as soon as he reached the outskirts of Snowdin. Someone must have caught her. Finally. Took longer than he had expected. He had known she was still alive, still close by - he might not have much magic nowadays, but the scent of a human was easy to track.

It was a shame that he hadn’t been the one to find her, he would have liked some real food. It was alright, though - whoever had caught the little beast deserved the meat. He was sure that the human gave them a challenging hunt.

The town felt… off. It was quiet, as always, but it felt like all of Snowdin was on-edge. They could probably smell the blood too. Doggo was pacing at the border, and his ears went back when Sans made eye contact.

Fear. That wasn’t unusual. They all thought he’d killed his own brother, why wouldn’t they be afraid?

The scent got stronger as he neared home. Smelled like they’d dragged the corpse all over the damn town before they took it home. Stars, it reeked. He hated that metallic smell, hated that it made him hungry. When he reached his front door, he stopped, turned his head slowly to left and right. Breathed in deep.

The light from his single eye fell onto the storehouse.

...

She was curled up in a ball under the worktable. She was so small that he might not have noticed her, were the scent of her not pervading the whole area. He lowered himself to sit at the other end of the room, his eye casting the darkness in red and reflecting off the tools on the wall.

He could wait for her to wake up. The human had had the courtesy not to kill him out in the woods; despite the unexpected strength of that blow she had given his skull, there was no ill intent behind it. If there had been, he wouldn't be alive. There was no justification for killing a person in their sleep anyway, so he would wait.

Now that he was in the same room as her, he could smell something else beneath the tang of blood. A sickly, cloying scent like death. The thought of eating human made him feel ill at the best of times, but she smelled bad. Rotten. He wasn’t desperate enough to eat rotten meat.

He thought perhaps she had fallen down. She wasn’t moving, and her breath came in shallow gasps. The skin on her face and hands was shiny, discoloured, bleeding in places.

Skeletons don’t need to eat that often anyway. He was patient. He could hang on a bit longer for the sake of less rotten meat.

He snuffed out the light in his eye, and he watched.

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit should have known it would go like this.

When she awoke, she found that some of her fight had returned. Her limbs responded more readily, her reaction time was a little better - which would be tested, when she noticed that she was no longer alone.

A looming hulk. The skeleton, resting against the far wall. The red light was gone from the gaping pit of his eyesocket, and she could hear him breathing evenly. Was he unconscious? He hadn’t been there when she entered the cabin, she was sure she would have noticed him even in her delirious state. She took in the details of his form.

Dirty, rough bone, shadowed below his eyesockets, giving the illusion of sickness and fatigue. The visible hand resting palm-up on the floor was oversized, spindly, but with an area of smooth bone that formed a solid palm - not like a human skeleton at all. His skull was twice the size of a human one too, though similar in shape. Above his left socket, a wide fissure split his skull, running back over his head and down to reach the edge of the socket.

She tipped her head, eyes trained on the crack. Had she made it worse when she hit him? She almost hoped not. Unlike whoever had set the trap that ruined her leg, she never intended to do other survivors harm. They were all just trying to get by.

She didn’t blame people for taking the violent route - it was so much easier to get by through means of murder - but she didn't have the strength of body or mind to live that way.

With some effort to remain silent, she shifted herself up and over to the door. She had to crawl, since her leg had become even less useable while she slept. It was like dragging a lead weight. She dreaded to think that she might have to cut it off somehow if it didn’t heal.

She made it to the door without waking the monster, but found that it had been bolted shut. Two deadbolts, one at the bottom and one at the top. It took most of her remaining strength, but she wrested the lower bolt up without a sound.

The door was tall, clearly built to accommodate people over seven feet tall. She managed to stand, clutching the handle and heaving herself up, most of her weight against the flat of the door, but even standing up she wasn’t close to reaching the top bolt. If she could jump, she might just be able to touch the bolt, but she still wouldn’t be able to pull it down.

Her expression hardened with conviction.

▵▾▵▾▵

It had never been his intention to let her escape.

Sans continued to appear dormant, entertaining himself watching the little creature shuffle about. It appeared that her leg was broken, or at least badly wounded. Had he done that? He couldn’t remember. He thought she was running just fine when he lost sight of her in the woods.

He watched as she lifted the long stick she had hit him with in the forest, gingerly letting it make contact with the door before she attempted to lever the jagged end of it underneath the deadbolt. Surprisingly she managed to rotate it somewhat, but the bolt screeched as it turned in its socket.

The human froze, dropped clumsily to the floor, staring back at him in the dark with terror on her features. He couldn’t help himself: he let out a low, rough chuckle and allowed his eyelight to sputter back to life, his permanent smile widening.

The human let out a growl of her own, small and frail just like her. He found it almost endearing - like a rabbit trying to intimidate a bear. He gathered his thoughts and focused on the words. It was harder nowadays, he tended to forget sentences halfway through if he wasn't paying attention.

“You’re not leaving.”

She tried to stand, her leg gave way under her and caused her to put all her weight on the stick. Sans stood too, hands in his pockets casually.

“Why haven’t you killed me already?” Her voice was feeble, barely a whisper. He tilted his head to hear her better.

“...Sure I was… going to?”

She scoffed. “Don’t fuck with me, of course you are.”

Her audacity was impressive, considering. The hum of his eye filled the silence while he thought. “Maybe I like-... to play with my food.” He grinned.

That got a reaction. Her blood-stained mouth turned down at the corners. Her growling rose, and she bared her teeth. Well, he’d thought it was funny.

“You bastard. I’m done for anyway, get it over with quickly.”

He fell silent, head still tilted, his eyelight twitching as he processed her words.

“...Why?”

She merely glared in response, but he waited patiently. He was good at waiting. She frowned deeply at him, and then sunk to the floor.

“Look. Half of my body is rotting away,” her voice cracked, “so if you’re going to eat me, just be quick about it.”

His vision roamed over her, the red of his eye reflecting off the pallor of her skin. Clearly her leg was wounded. Her mouth was bleeding too, and her vision was out of focus. Her fingers didn’t seem to grip properly.

"...No."

He moved with purpose, shrugged off his faded blue coat and threw it over her. She tried to back away, but the heavy fabric enveloped her and trapped her in place. Sans hoisted the human into the crook of his arm, and unbolted the door.

His jacket would do to mask her scent while he swiftly carried her to the house. He felt her struggle uselessly, so he squeezed her tighter until she squeaked and stopped moving. She was his prey; he found her and he would get to eat her, but she wasn’t ready for eating yet.

He set the bundle down on the rug and went about setting a fire in the hearth. The bundle shuffled, wriggled away a little, and he laid one hand on the fabric to stop her.

“Why struggle?” He asked. The bundle went still again.

When the fire was set, he pulled his jacket free and dropped it aside. The human glared up at him, sprawled on the floor. Her wide eyes travelled to his face then flicked away to investigate the room, probably looking for a way to escape.

He plucked away the things wrapped around her shoulders. Rope, and a bag, and the sodden jacket she was wearing. He tossed them to the side so that he could work more easily. She didn’t seem to like that, and struggled with her useless fingers to grasp the items when he pulled them away and placed them out of her reach. He pushed her hand down.

“No.” He stated.

Sans took ahold of the foot that lay slack on the floor. The human gave a sharp noise of pain and fear, and one of her hands went around his. Her tiny fingers were so delicate and cold, barely gripping him as they tried desperately to pry his talons away.

So small. Had Frisk been that small? But he was smaller back then, too…

He was torn from his thoughts as something came into contact with the back of his hand. He focussed on it. The human had… tried to stab his hand with a fork - ‘stab’ being a generous term; he had hardly felt it. Yet again, there was no malice behind the attack - the prongs had bent outwards and left barely a scratch.

He chuckled, and caged both her hands in one of his own, squeezing them enough that she had to drop her secret weapon, keeping her out of the way while he carefully slipped her boot free. She whined as it came away, and that sickly scent became all the more apparent as the wounded limb was revealed.

A stained bandage wrapped the leg, but it didn’t seem to be doing much good. All her clothing was soaked through and just as cold as she was. How something so small had survived in that storm, he couldn’t fathom. He knew humans weren’t good at cold.

He loosened his grip on her, since she had stopped resisting. She didn’t react, apparently in a daze as she watched his actions without a sound, so he let her go completely, using both hands to unwrap the bandages.

It wasn’t… good. He knew how humans worked, how much their bodies could take before they gave up. There wasn’t too much blood, but the limb was the wrong colour by far. Evenly-spaced gouges encircled her ankle.

“Teeth.” He remarked. “A monster? Or... a trap?” She didn’t answer, eyes wide and staring past him into the fire. Her breath was coming shallow and fast.

He stripped away her socks - she had several, layered up - and inspected her foot. Her extremities were waxy and grey. Yes, he remembered this happened to humans in the cold - what was it called?

“...Frost. Frost-...?” He searched for the word aloud. He couldn’t quite…

“Frostbite.” She whispered, eyes still glazed.

Ahh, that was the one. He smiled to himself. His memory was shot full of holes just like his head, but he was pretty pleased with himself for that recollection.

He needed to fix this, to get rid of the stench of sickness. This wasn’t edible. He poked at her other foot several times, until she blinked and her vision focussed on him.

“This one too.” He poked her foot again. Her eyes flicked down to the leg that still had a boot on it, and she shook her head. He huffed and gripped her boot for her, pulling it loose, and repeating:

“This one too.”

She got the idea that time, and began obediently working free the bandage and socks on the other leg.

While she was distracted, he slipped his fingers under her ankle and lifted it gently, drawing another whine from her. He could feel her tense up every time he moved, but as much as he might have joked about it, he wouldn’t force her to suffer before she died. Not even humans deserved that.

He took a breath, stilling his soul and cycling what remained of his magic. Green; it wasn’t hard, he used to do this for Paps all the time. Clear your head. Green magic, like… like Undyne’s...

His hands involuntarily clenched, and the human yelped and kicked at him with her stronger foot, wriggling despite the pain it must have caused her to do so. He let go as soon as his mind caught up, and she scrambled away, dragging her wounded leg, backing up until she hit the sofa. A tear dropped down her cheek, leaving a track in the dirt.

“No.” He grumbled. He hadn’t meant to do that.

He shuffled over to her, her tiny form shrinking back further against the sofa as if she could get away. One hand went to her shoulder and held her in place, his thumb wiping the teardrop away. His movement drew another growl from the little creature as his other hand curled around her leg again. He just needed her to stay still for a moment. He pushed her back into the sofa further, and she made a distressed squeak but stopped moving. There. Better.

He avoided thinking about the magic too much as he summoned it this time, and successfully managed to draw a thin stream of glimmering green which trickled down to pool in his palm.

He felt it begin to warm his bones and her skin as a wave of emotional feedback came over him. Comfort and reassurance, as was associated with green magic. He saw the same effect in her eyes where they reflected the light. Her distrustful glare softened at the edges, becoming confused.

He was very tired now, but it’d be worth it in the end. She’d taste much better if the meat was healthy. His eyelight sputtered painfully and leaked red essence down his cheekbone, and a wave of dizziness overcame him. Maybe he went a little overboard.

He wiped away the residual magic from around his socket, and lifted his prey to set her back beside the fireplace, telling her: “Stay.”

He pushed his jacket over to her, where it would at least do something to cover her scent. She still frowned up at him darkly, but said nothing. Her firey temperament was unnerving. He went to perform his final checks for the night and get away, somewhere safe and secure.

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit curled further into herself as the skeleton stood and left her be, pushing his coat over to her with his foot. He slumped away to a darkened corner of the room, taking the hum of the red light with him.

What was she meant to think?

She had been sure he was intending to kill her right away, and her fear and pain had driven her into a state of dissociation, preparing for the inevitable, but... He had put in a fire to keep her warm, done whatever that light was to her wounded leg that filled her with unwarranted comfort and smoothed over the sores on her skin. Everything about this creature was both terrifying and contradictory.

His voice was deep like a tomb, like the ocean floor. It was felt more than heard. She could drown in it, and its resonation sparked fear in her instantly. He was tough too, barely reacting to her attempts to get free from him. He could crush her in a heartbeat, but he was calm behind his threatening aura.

He had pinned her down, smiled maliciously and twisted her wounded leg, and then healed it without explanation. Clearly it took some effort too, she didn’t miss the physical toll that doing that… thing… had brought on the monster - it had made him cry for goodness’ sake! She wondered if it had hurt him, to take her pain away.

She heard a lock click, and the skeleton shuffled back past her, switching off the light - an electric light - and sloping off into the darkness of the house. Even when he was out of sight, she could hear him moving around upstairs, floorboards creaking under him. She didn’t bother to look for a way out: even if there was one she would die within a day of escaping. She had to recover her strength first.

She dragged herself closer to the fire and pulled out another log to lay across it. The warmth prickled her cheeks and fingers after the weeks of exposure. Right now she couldn’t bear to think about going back out into the ice.

Consciousness was leaving her. Before sleep stole away with her completely, she reached for the coat he had left behind and wrapped it around her shoulders. It swamped her, and though it was threadbare, the lining was still soft. The front of the garment was stained a dark red, so she didn’t touch that part. It smelt of woodsmoke and something metallic, like rust. She tried not to think about it.

When she awoke, her head was throbbing. The skeleton was sitting on the sofa and just staring at the opposite wall, one finger hooked over the edge of his damaged eyesocket. His pupil hummed that continuous low tone as it flickered. A spark spat out from it, making both of them jump. The monster scraped his talons down over the offending socket with an unnerving, hollow sound.

When the light came back into view, it was focused on Kit. The monster grinned, which was disconcerting on a face with a smile already set so wide. Kit wondered if he was as hungry as she was, and why she hadn’t been killed yet.

It could be some psychological torture, she thought, as he lifted her back up like a doll in his gigantic talons and put her on the sofa. Perhaps his intention was to inspire Stockholm Syndrome, or just toy with her until he got bored. He had already admitted that he intended to eat her, so why was he wasting his time helping her?

Should she run now, or risk another day of recovery?

Kit was conflicted. She tried to consider how she would react if a human had captured her, but her judgement was blurred by her feverish mind. She knew that if she left now, she wouldn’t stand a chance of outrunning anyone who tried to catch her again, even this slowpoke of a monster.

She settled on biding her time, keeping an eye out for possible ways to escape.

The monster retrieved the jacket and left her alone to make his daily errands, making it clear by a heavy hand on her shoulder that he expected her to sit put. He commanded her to ‘stay’ again.

As soon as he was gone, she disobeyed on principle and crawled over to her staff which he had propped in a corner. He had left all of her things right where she could reach them. Her jacket was hung over a chair by the fire to dry with her boots. He hadn’t even confiscated her rucksack, and the crooked fork lay on top of it almost mockingly.

Maybe he was absent-minded, as slow mentally as he was physically. Unlike Toriel, the skeleton didn’t seem to care about whether Kit was disobedient or violent. When she lashed out, he just stared at her, unphased.

Most likely, he thought that she couldn’t do anything to hurt him. He was probably right.

She scouted out the house with the help of her trusty cane. There was only one door on the ground floor, which was locked as expected. The window in the living room was boarded up completely aside from a gap at the top. Too high and too small for her to climb through in her current state.

Through the gaps in the boards, Kit could see that the snowdrifts outside the house that reached up over the windowsill. She spent a while testing the strength of all the boards, but they had been reinforced thoroughly. Not a chance. She drank some water from the kitchen tap before carrying on.

She shuffled her way up the stairs, and when she arrived at the top, panting and shaky, she checked each of the doors on this floor. Two were locked, one opened to reveal an airing cupboard, and one lead to a bathroom.

She used the bathroom, glad for the luxury of real facilities for a change. The water came through lukewarm, and she clenched and unclenched her stiff fingers under the stream as she attempted to scrub the layers of dirt from her hands and face. She tried not to look in the mirror. The girl she saw there wasn’t one she recognised. Too thin. Eyes dull and cheeks gaunt under the stains that refused to wash away.

She dried herself, and continued her reconnaissance. At the end of the corridor was one last door, but this was also crudely boarded up on the inside. She could see a small balcony beyond the planks, sheltered below the eaves of the house.

It felt like this house had been built with a family in mind, once upon a time. Safe and sturdy. Small enough to be defensible, but big enough for several occupants. The walls weren’t thick enough to do much about the cold, but they kept the sounds of the outside world at bay.

Incredible that anyone could build a place like this inside a cave.

If Kit intended to get out of here, she would need a plan. She could find out where the monster kept the door key; if he was as absent-minded as he appeared, that could be an option. It would be safer to pry the boards free from a window, but that would have to wait until she was stronger, and she didn’t know if she had that long.

When she had finished her exploring, she lay against the wall in the corridor with her left leg stretched out. Her body was overheating and shivering at the same time, and she was fighting the urge to fall asleep. She didn’t want to go back downstairs. Her abductor needed to be aware that she wasn’t going to be compliant.

No, no. Instead of doing as she was told and staying put, she would find somewhere to sleep where he couldn’t find her.

That airing cupboard seemed promising…

It was perfect, once she had made a cocoon out of the towels in there. She had some trouble curling up and bashed her leg more than once, but in the end, she had a good hiding place. It was warm in there, too - the boiler was working, so it looked like this monster had a reliable source of electricity.

She fell asleep like that, in the close safety of darkness.

▵▾▵▾▵

A thud announced the monster’s arrival home, but Kit hardly registered it, adjusting her position and groaning softly into her towel bedding. Muffled speech, followed by a long, low growl that shook her fully awake as she remembered what she had done.

She held her breath, a wry smile playing on her lips as she listened to the monster stomp around the house, movements getting more and more urgent. He passed by her hiding spot, opened and slammed a couple of other doors, and then let loose a furious roar. An object hit the floor and shattered. She almost began to hope that he wouldn’t find her.

Heavy footsteps passed by the cupboard door, then slowed. He was so close that Kit could hear his laboured breath. Her heart hammered so loudly. The light from his eye rolled slowly over, beamed between the slats in the door. Would he kill her now? She was past the point of really caring; it was only a matter of time.

The door was forcefully thrown open, and the skeleton released an exasperated growl and dragged her from the cupboard by her wrist. Kit yelped at the strength of his grip and tried to squirm free, but he held tighter.

She was roughly picked up under one arm and pressed against his ribcage, carried back downstairs, and dropped with some force to the floor, drawing another yelp from her as she jarred her leg. She curled up, eyes scrunched shut to stop the tears. He wouldn’t see her concede so easily to violence. His breath was heavy and close above her, accompanied by the oscillating hum of his eye.

She wiped her hot eyes and risked a glance. The monster was standing over her, single pupil constricted and seething. A drop of that red light ran down his cheekbone and dropped onto the front of his jacket, adding to the dark stain there. His chest rose and fell deeply as he loomed, fists clenched.

...She was in trouble.

She began to shuffle away, towards the door. A shower of sparks sputtered from his socket and several jagged bones tore up through the floor behind her, blocking her escape. Kit froze, eyes wide.

“Y-you don’t… go a-anywhere.” He rumbled.

Her expression remained defiant despite the show of… whatever that was... He looked like he might strike her, or worse, but instead he took a deep breath, released it, and turned away. He strode over to her belongings in the corner, and took up her rope.

Hoisted again by her own petard...

Her hands were quickly and tightly bound behind her back despite her squirming. She turned and tried to bite him, but her teeth just clamped down on the padded sleeve of his jacket to no avail. He huffed and pushed her head away. When she was bound he pulled the rope taught, lifting her by her wrists and making her yelp. He tilted the sofa up one-handed to throw the rope under and trap it beneath.

“Stay. There.” He punctuated it by letting the furniture drop back into place.

Kit screamed fiercely at him. It took him about three seconds to react, turn and look at her, lean in close, and let loose a bellow of such fury that she fell backwards from the force. She rolled onto her side and glowered at the wall, tensing her shoulders so he didn’t see her tremble.

It only took her about thirty minutes to get free.

The trick was that when your hands were bound, you had to keep your wrists and an angle from one another. Her father had taught her that.

All she had to do was angle her wrists back parallel to one another and use the slack to wriggle free. She sat with her hands behind her, backed up against the sofa so the skeleton wouldn’t realise she was free when he came back in to the room to light a fire.

He didn’t speak, didn’t even look at her, no sound but his eye buzzing and the fire crackling as he breathed life into it. When he threw his jacket over her, still avoiding eye contact, and went upstairs to sleep, Kit took ahold of the rope.

It took all her weight to free it from beneath the sofa, but she managed and it came loose abruptly, knocking her flat. She wrapped it up good and small, and hid it at the very back of one of the kitchen cupboards, low down where he would struggle to look. Before she stashed it away, she fetched her knife and cut a little piece from the end. It wouldn’t matter if it was a bit shorter.

The spare piece of rope went into the fire, hanging out so that it didn’t burn completely. Then, she stowed her knife deep in her pack again and dragged the jacket with her behind the sofa. She fell asleep wedged in the gap. Now the score was even again, and the beast could guarantee she would be giving him the silent treatment tomorrow. Eventually he would learn not to try to cage a wild animal.

She was awoken by the light from his eye, blindingly close. She tried to scramble away, but the back of her head met the wall hard, making her groan. The skeleton chuckled darkly at her from his position leaning over the back of the sofa. How long had he been watching her?

“Come out.”

She just huffed at him, wedging herself further into the little gap to make it clear she wasn’t going to stop acting up. This was his fault for trying to subdue her.

She was playing with fire, but morbid curiosity made her want to see how far she could push her luck. Whether he would snap and do something truly violent, or whether she could drive him to make an irrational mistake that would grant her her freedom.

One giant hand took ahold of her bad leg.

“Ah- ouch! Don’t!” She yelled urgently. So much for the silent treatment…

The hand stopped moving, then slowly retracted.

“Come out.” He repeated, quieter.

When she didn’t respond, the monster disappeared from above. Rather than pull her out of her hiding spot, he effortlessly pulled the sofa away from her instead, and then leaned over to pick her up like a doll again.

She fought him, of course. She hated that she was so useless in his grasp. He could hold her easily in one arm, and all her struggles were as effective as trying to bend iron.

“The rope?” He lifted her by her shoulders to look her in the eye, pointed talons gripping her tight.

She refused to answer, so he asked again in the same passive tone. She pointed to the fireplace dismissively. He thankfully put her down to check the fireplace, then faced her with a squint, the charred rope-end between his thumb and index finger. For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to buy it, but then he let out a long sigh.

“It’s yours… why destroy it?”

Kit shrugged, still avoiding dignifying him with a verbal response. The skeleton shook his head, then reached out towards her. She tensed, expecting aggression, but it didn’t come. His movements were careful as he pulled his coat away from around her shoulders and stood to leave. As he reached the door, though, he stopped, turned, and came back to her.

One huge hand came to rest on her shoulder.

“Stay.”

When he didn’t remove his hand, Kit frowned up at him, and then made the realisation that he was vying for confirmation from her.

“Stay.” He said again, more gently.

She merely shook her head, and shrugged away from his grasp.

He wouldn’t catch her out that easily.

Chapter Text

You did this to yourself.

It continued for the next few days in the same way: Kit slowly recovered her strength, and her resentfulness and venom towards her captor grew with it. Whenever the skeleton told her to do something, she would go out of her way to defy him. No matter what she did, his patience was unending, and he would always ask her twice to do something if she ignored him or disobeyed.

Despite his size and obvious strength, he didn’t hurt her on purpose. Other than that first time he had thrown her to the ground in a rage, he hadn’t done any more harm than the fingerprint bruises he left on her arms when she squirmed in his grasp.

When he left her alone to go on his patrols, she would find somewhere new to hide. Every afternoon he would rumble about the house to find her and bring her back to the living room. The third time he had to come and find her, something shifted in his expression from annoyance to realisation: he had caught on to what she was doing.

After that, it never seemed to make him angry, and though he always told Kit to stay, she knew it wasn’t a command any more. She might have been mistaken, but it almost seemed like he was entertained by the daily ritual of coming home to track her down...

His methods confused her utterly. She became less certain and more distrustful with each day that she woke up to find that she was still alive. The beast would have no problem killing her. If he lost track of her small form while he wandered about his house in that trance-like state he sometimes entered, he could crush both her legs with one misstep. He could snuff her out without any effort. So what was his game plan?

She was especially wary when he made gestures that seemed unnecessarily kind. Every time he did something generous, like healing her leg again with that strange green light, she became more certain that he was trying to coerce her into compliance. To what end, she couldn’t tell, but perhaps he liked the idea of having a human pet.

As the days rolled by, and her body got stronger, she began to fight back. She refused to communicate, ignored his stilted attempts at conversation. In the day when he told her to ‘stay’ while he was out, she hid. At night when he was at home and told her to rest, she stayed awake. She did everything she could think of to push her luck. He never retaliated.

When the monster went out each day, Kit couldn’t bear to stay in the open area of the main room. She slept fitfully through most of those times. The stagnancy and isolation drove her mad, and even the hum of that big red orb was better than the quiet.

The underground was so much worse when the monsters were awake. Their howls and shrieks carried on the still air, and sometimes footsteps crunched past the windows. No matter what Kit did, she couldn’t relax. There was nothing to distract her and hunger settled deep into her bones like a sickness she would never shake, making her frail and sore.

It felt as though the cold had made a permanent home inside her, too. Even sitting in front of the fire, the side facing the flames would burn while her other side would freeze. The airing cupboard was better, but only barely.

Kit had to focus to maintain her distant attitude towards the monster. When he came home, the low rumble of his breath and the creak of his footsteps allowed her to know he was there at all times. The light of his eye cut through the gloom. His presence filled the emptiness. It distracted her from the ache and gave her a channel for her frustration, but she was concerned that it was all part of his plan.

Despite his apparent simple-mindedness, he never let slip where he kept the door key. Before he slept, he checked every door and window with care, counting them off under his breath as if it was hard to remember them all. Then he retreated to one of the rooms upstairs and locked it behind him. Anything in the house that she might have added to her collection of tools had been hidden away - there wasn’t even a fire poker; he used his bare hands to stoke the fire without any apparent discomfort.

His quiet nonchalance made her feel all the more useless. He was obviously certain of his immunity to anything she could do. He left her no control, no option, no hope of escaping.

“ You’re not leaving. ” He had said.

▵▾▵▾▵

The human was troublesome, that was certain. She had more fight in her every day, but she still wasn’t ready to eat. That sick, metallic scent still clung to her and made her laughably easy to find every time she pulled that hiding stunt.

The first time, Sans had been so angry . He hadn’t meant to hurt her the way he did. He thought for a moment that she had found a way through the defences that he rigorously checked and maintained. He caught on after that. She was making active attempts to infuriate him. He bit back his rage, tried not to let her game get to him.

He couldn’t afford to use force on her, her tiny body would break so easily and then the food would rot before he could cut and preserve the meat properly. It was going to last them a long time.

After he had solidified that thought in his mind, it was easy to put up with her. She was belligerent and rude, but he tried to make light of the situation. His hunger could be controlled, as could his anger. She wouldn’t drive him to act so rashly again.

It required restraint; living this way. He had collected all the sharp and heavy objects from the house and locked them in Papyrus’ old bedroom for safekeeping. Her bravery was concerning - she was exactly the kind of human he would expect to lash out and shatter his fragile soul. He had to watch her every move, mask his nervousness, make it appear that he was impervious to her outbursts so that she wouldn’t catch on to how much of a threat she really was.

He left the knife she carried in her belongings as a kind of test. It was too small to truly damage him, but he wanted to see whether she would use it in violence, given the opportunity.

Sans was morbidly intrigued by her lack of fear. It was... refreshing? She might have been faking her courage, but it was easy to be convinced that she wasn’t terrified of him. The other monsters around Snowdin didn’t bother to hide their true feelings; they wanted him to know how much they despised him.

How he longed for the company of the Canine Unit, those slow afternoons of decades past when they would drink and joke and play cards, so oblivious to the human who was on their way to doom monsterkind forever. Back when he was the comedian, not the butcher.

Look at him now though, with company again, for however short a time it would be. He missed having someone to talk to, even if the conversation was one-sided. 

Her stubbornness was forgivable since she would repay him in the long run, and while he waited, her soul resonated in that harmonious, resolute way that only human souls could, and empowered his own in turn. He could feel his strength returning to him. If he kept her alive for a week or so, he might even be able to summon his blasters again.

There was one problem with that plan: she was looking painfully thin.

He remembered that humans needed more food than monsters to sustain their physically-grounded forms. He would have to find something edible if he wanted to keep her alive more than a few days. She didn’t look like she would need much, but all the traps around Snowdin were empty by the time he got to them. The dogs always beat him to it.

He wasn’t as fast as he used to be.

▵▾▵▾▵

The next morning, Sans made it his mission to find the human some food. He checked the storehouse, found one or two tins of unknown human food and brought them in. He used his talons to pry the top from one of them and gave it to her. She accepted without resistance - she must have been very hungry.

He watched her while she sat on the floor and ate straight from the tin. When he was sure that she was going to eat properly and not waste what he had given her, he got up to check the kitchen. All the cupboards were as empty as he remembered. Barely any intact crockery, let alone any food.

He was rummaging around in the lower cupboards when his claw caught on something. He withdrew.

Rope?

He recognised it from somewhere...

...Her rope.

He brought it in to show her, and she looked up from where she sat, legs crossed before her, with her mouth bleeding from the sharp edges of the tin. Her eyes went wide as she saw what he held in his hand.

It was such a dramatic reaction: several emotions flashed over her expression at once - surprise, guilt, fear, and then her brow creased and her face settled on resentment. She pointedly sat on her hands.

What was she… oh. She thought he was going to tie her up again?

He couldn’t help but chuckle at that fiery expression. He let the laugh roll deeply through his ribcage until the stiffness in her shoulders lessened, and her expression changed to confusion.

He stepped around her and looped the spool of rope over the bannister post. Then, he crouched before her and lifted his hand to her mouth. She flinched, bared her teeth and tried to bite him, so he brought his other hand up behind her neck to hold her in place. She went stiff, eyes trained on his own.

He cycled to green magic, brought a drop of it to collect at the tip of his thumb. Compared to his first attempt, it was surprisingly easy - her soul really was making him stronger every day. He pressed his thumb to the side of her mouth where she had cut it, and then repeated it on the other side. Thankfully, she stayed still throughout the process.

He nodded slowly, and withdrew.

“There.” He said.

He stood with a grunt, and took his jacket from the floor beside her. As usual, before he left he placed a hand on her head.

“Stay.”

▵▾▵▾▵

As usual, Kit didn’t stay. She tidied up the empty food can and limped upstairs to wash her face. In the mirror, she checked the corners of her mouth. Completely healed, not even a mark where the metal had cut her. She bared her teeth.

Yeah… She really wasn’t very scary.

No wonder he had laughed at her.

She shivered. Compared to someone like him, she must look really pathetic. Her teeth would probably break before they left a mark on his bones.

She was feeling shaky again, so she took all the cushions from the sofa and brought them underneath the kitchen table. Two were propped up against the table legs as defensive walls. It wasn’t a great hiding spot, but she was too weak to care. At least she had food in her now.

Kit was awoken upon his return. She watched his feet as he stomped the snow from his shoes and slipped them off. His feet clacked over onto the kitchen tile, and he made a beeline for the table, but instead of leaning down to fetch her, he turned again, and walked away.

She listened. The floorboards creaked overhead. He had gone upstairs, and was opening and shutting doors… Surely he knew where she was. Was he actively encouraging her stupid game now?

After a minute or two, he came back and immediately leant down to look into her nest, an expectant grin on his face. She huffed. He was so aggravating, more so now that he was becoming accustomed to her provocation. When she didn’t move, he slid her out on a cushion.

He hunkered down before her, still eclipsing her in height. His eye sparked as he gazed at her. One giant hand reached up to the tabletop and brought a blue glowing object into the space between them. He offered it to her, so she took it.

It was a mushroom. It had translucent, shimmery flesh that was cool to the touch and glowed from inside with a soft blue-green light. It was admittedly beautiful as she rolled it around in her hands, watching how the light inside pooled in certain parts of the fungus. She looked up at him uncertainly.

“Eat.”

She snorted. What was with these monsters and trying to make her eat things that clearly weren’t meant for eating? She was hardly going to just eat an unknown type of mushroom. It was lovely, but surely not edible. She shook her head.

“Eat.” He urged.

She grunted and shook her head again. The skeleton grumbled, and took another mushroom from the pile on the table. He bit into it, finishing the thing in two mouthfuls. She could see the joint of his jaw moving as he ate.

What, did he think that would convince her? Would toxins like that even effect a skeleton? He pushed her hand to her mouth. She growled warningly, so he took her chin in his hand.

“Eat.”

“No!” She threw the mushroom across the room, turning her face away. The monster’s eye rolled in his socket and he picked up another fungus, turning her around and pulling her towards him, one sturdy arm over her torso. She kicked her legs and howled as though she were a child having a tantrum.

“You’re going to die.” He stated darkly. It was meant as an incentive, not a threat, but she stiffened in his grasp anyway.

“I know.” Her voice was monotone. Yes, that was her fate, whether from hunger or violence. She accepted that. The skeleton lifted the mushroom again, and Kit twisted free from his grasp, shuffling away. He begrudgingly let her escape.

“Eat, please?” His voice rumbled softly, cutting through her thoughts.

He hadn’t ever asked before.

Some tether in her mind, pulled taut for too long, snapped.

She slumped against the table leg. She had refused Toriel’s food and regretted her decision. It was all hopeless in the end, so why wait to die? If it was poison, so be it. At least that way she wouldn’t ever be hungry or cold again. She snatched the fungus from him and brought it up to her mouth, holding her breath.

…

It wasn’t bad. The flesh was smooth and a little watery, cold on her tongue. It felt more like she was eating a jellyfish than a mushroom, but it had a gentle taste, chalky and sweet. She took another bite, and her teeth pierced the glowing centre of the fungus. The blue light escaped as it met the air, drifting up like dust on a sunbeam, shimmering and fading out of existence.

“Whoa…” She murmured.

The skeleton stayed quiet beside her on the tile, but the red glare from his eye threw her shadow out long across the floor. She looked up at him.

“Hey, skeleton?”

After a second or two, his eye constricted into focus.

“If this kills me, thanks anyway.”

His brow creased slowly. “...Why?”

She shrugged, and reached up for another mushroom. “Worth it.”

She ate several more mushrooms. Go hard or go home, right? She liked the alien sensation of biting into the cold tingle of bioluminescence and releasing that blue shimmer.

“...When did you s-start talking?” The monster muttered, still watching her.

“When I stopped caring.” She returned coldly.

The feeling of composure and indifference was freeing. She relaxed back against the table, not concerned for the skeleton’s leering gaze while she ate. Did this mean he had won? Well, no, she was still intending to be disobedient. She just didn't care for the outcome any more.

If she stopped playing the game of cat and mouse that she had initiated, she would be giving him what he wanted, but if she carried on he would get to keep enjoying the chase.

Win or lose? Die now, or die later?

It didn't matter either way.

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit was quickly made to regret that thought.

She was awoken at some indeterminable time in the middle of the night, and it was so dark that she could hardly see her hand in front of her face. She tried not to panic. It was just another snowstorm, or…

The light was strange, somehow. In her periphery, a shimmering residue coalesced when she held still. She began to roll upright, and instantly regretted it.

It felt like everything she touched was made of hot needles. She slowly pushed herself up, only for a wave of dizziness to overtake her when she tried to stand. She felt nausea rise in her abdomen. The mushrooms...

She needed water. Her heart was audible in her ears it was beating so hard. She mustn’t panic, she’d be okay. She put her hand down to steady herself and a shock of intense pain ran up her arm, making her squeak.

A floorboard creaked somewhere above, amplified by her overactive senses.

She panicked.

She dismissed the pain and stumbled away from the stairs, groping blindly and having to bite back another yelp as her hand met the wall. Her breath came shallow and sharp, her throat closing up as she tried to get up, to get away. She could hear him coming downstairs, she had to be faster, he was going to find her!

It was too late. The red light cast over the floor, filling her vision with blood. She gasped and curled up, toppling to her side, hands clasped over her ears and eyes scrunched shut. Too late. Her shoulder was full of thorns where it had hit the carpet. She sobbed silently into her arms.

There was a muffled rumble of speech, loud as thunder, and a hand grasped her arm. She whined, scrunched up smaller. The talons on her arm didn’t release. It felt like her skin, thin as paper, was being torn to shreds by their touch, blood running down her arm to meet the pool of crimson all around her. More spindly fingers found their way to her wrist, sunk their tips into her skin and pulled her hands away from her ears, and she screamed.

She tried to launch herself away with her eyes still closed. Her head met something hard, sending her fumbling back to the floor in agony, and she lost all sense of direction as she was lifted and rolled over, every touch stinging her skin and squeezing more tears from her eyes. It hurt like her body was disintegrating. She flailed, tried to get her bearings. She couldn’t breathe, she was drowning in blood… or was that just fear crushing her lungs?

Through the commotion of her thoughts she could hear something, feel a vibration amongst all the intense sensations. She made the mistake of opening her eyes, and red filled her vision, scorching her eyes and making her struggle more, trying to escape. She lashed out her fists to push the light away, but was quickly held in place by red-hot iron bars across her chest and stomach. She screamed and kicked and twisted in the cage but it was too strong.

The voice of thunder uttered a single syllable: “Stop.”

The pain was too much. She blacked out.

After a time, perhaps seconds, perhaps hours, she began to recover her senses. She opened her eyes slowly, and found the room in a state of charcoal darkness once more. No blood. No blinding lights. The iron bars across her torso were just the bare arm-bones of her captor, sitting behind her and holding her tight. He was breathing almost as heavily as she was.

As realisation dawned, she began to struggle again, drawing a ragged breath. A stray tear ran down her cheek and dropped into the gap between the wrist bones of the skeleton, and he flinched. She felt him lean around to study her face. His eye was absent from its socket, which was somehow more terrifying.

“No.” He whispered, so quiet she hardly heard it as he slowly lifted one hand to her face. The sight of his sharp fingertips made her queasy and she turned away, the movement making her hiss in pain. He didn’t try to touch her again.

“Are you... dying?” He asked, still very quiet.

“I might be.” She gave a cold laugh. “F-fetch the hatchet, put me- ugh -put me out of my misery, right?” She shuddered out between fragmented breaths.

“...Not funny.” He rumbled.

“Ah, what do you care?” She spat bitterly.

He didn’t reply, just inhaled deeply, his ribs pressing into her back. His hands twitched.

Kit sighed heavily too, and only then did the skeleton seem to realise he was still pinning her in place. He released his grip, and she slumped to the floor weakly with a groan.

“...Human?”

Kit stayed quiet, not moving. It still hurt; any movement made her skin feel like it was tearing away.

“W-what… what’s happening?”

Why did he sound scared ? She huffed frustratedly. He didn’t make sense from one second to the next. She could feel his gaze on her, despite knowing his eye was still extinguished.

“Toriel was right about this place…” She thought aloud.

“Huh?”

“I really didn’t stand a chance, did I? Even the food wants me dead.” She laughed bitterly, regretting it straight away as she broke into a coughing fit. Her throat was still raw from panic.

She heard cloth shift beside her, and the monster rose, stumbling upright and towards the kitchen in the dark. He had to guide himself with a hand against the wall as he went. She vaguely registered the red light returning as he entered the next room, and muffled sounds that only barely pierced the whir of discomfort at the forefront of her mind.

Now that she was over the worst of the attack, she shivered. Always so cold…

Should she have stayed with the goat woman, in the warm, snug little house with a room of her own? Could she have been happy there, once she settled into the mild lunacy that was Toriel’s way of life?

The dim light swung back over the room, and stopped some distance from her. The skeleton had his head tilted, standing at the threshold and apparently just watching, eye-light dim. He seemed to come to a conclusion, and trod across to push something clumsily into her hands. The cold glass soothed the nerves of her palms when she gripped it. She drank, still contemplating silently.

“Did-... did you say Toriel?” The skeleton intoned when he had returned to his seat.

“Hmm.”

“She... alive?” The pause in his stilted speech was intentional that time. It was laced with apprehension, distrust. Kit could tell how unsure he was of whether he really wanted to know the answer.

“You know her?” She asked.

“Yeah...”

Kit wasn’t sure whether she cared to prompt an elaboration from him, but after a long pause, he spoke again anyway. “I did. Haven’t seen her-... didn’t see her after. After…”

This time when she waited, he didn’t continue. She turned, and studied his glazed expression. His eye was dim and shaky, one finger hooked into his socket and his other hand twisted in the fabric of his stained shirt. Lost in his own thoughts, and they didn’t look like good ones.

For the first time, his mask seemed to fall a little. She could read his discomfort, the grimace on his face easy to recognise despite his constant grin. She wondered what he was thinking to cause that expression. What bad memory he was playing back.

She had worked through all the bad memories, it didn’t do to keep reliving them. They were as common as rotten apples fallen from the tree - it was better to savour the good ones where you could get them.

Memories like playing in the streets back at the beginning, when there were lots of survivors in their clan, all working together and making life easier for the children, so they could grow up half-normal in the wake of the war. Singing with her siblings, training with her father. There had been good days.

...

Had the skeleton ever had a good day?

“She is still alive, you know.” Kit tried to sound at least a little positive.

She peered up at the monster, but he was still vacant and unresponsive. It wasn't like she was going to start attempting genuine conversation with the beast anyway. She shuffled over to the fireplace and began to set it. It would be morning soon. Might as well try to warm up and get a little more sleep.

The wood was damp, and she was looking about for matches or a lighter when there was a snap behind her, and the fire flared in the grate. She turned back to gawp at her captor, who was smiling almost smugly at her reaction, one hand raised. His sockets curved up at the edges as he grinned. He looked a lot less scary pulling a silly face like that. She turned away and irritably continued to mess with the fire with a huff:

"I don't need your help."

The skeleton merely chuckled at her. Condescending bastard, she thought as she stoked the fire forcefully with a spare twig.

She'd find some way to get back at him before she died. This was all on him - if he hadn't caught her in that storm, she'd be free of the cave by now, out in the woods with a little place of her own to overwinter in, not having to rely on the cryptic generosity of a murderous skeleton.

…

Or she’d be long dead.

▵▾▵▾▵

When morning came and Sans was sure that the human was asleep, he went to prepare for the day ahead. It was delivery day, so he began collecting all the food he had managed to scavenge in the last week. His guest really hadn’t eaten very much, and clearly the Waterfall Gems weren’t too good for human bodies, so he collected up all the leftover mushrooms and shoved them into a satchel.

Plenty to eat this week - he’d found a patch of the fungi growing high up on a cliff, where nobody could reach. With his newly-recovered strength, he’d levitated them down to himself with no problem at all. He’d have to keep this human around a bit longer, just until the rest of his abilities returned.

He chewed on one of the mushrooms as he went about checking the house’s defences. All undamaged - the human hadn’t even tried to escape from the looks of it, though her metallic scent was all over the place now. It was worrying: she was clever, he could see that, probably waiting for exactly the right moment to do him in. She would have to die before then.

She had really shaken him earlier. It was like she had lost her mind for a moment, when she looked into his eye and screamed like she was being eaten alive. So much hatred there that she reminded him of someone else…

She seemed alright now though. When he went to retrieve his jacket from the main room, she was sleeping soundly in front of the fire. He wouldn't admit it out loud, but he liked watching her sleep. It was the only time she looked at peace. 

He crept around her small form to put another log on the fire and then laid a hand gently on her shoulder, telling her ‘stay’ just so she could take the opportunity to disobey him as always. The game seemed to burn off some of her frustration towards him.

Sans slung the satchel across himself and hid it under his jacket, heading out and stashing the key in his empty socket. Out of Snowdin and through the snowfield beyond, across the long, rotten bridge, checking defenses as he went like always. He didn’t do anything unusual, walked slow and steady as he did every day.

Until he reached the deep woods.

There, he hunched in the darkness of the overhanging trees and extended his Judge powers, rekindling the yellow magic he hadn’t used in so many years, expanding its field around him. He could sense everything in the vicinity, prey animals in the undergrowth and the Canine Unit in the next glade. He waited until he was sure there were no souls nearby, and then crossed over to the south path.

Below the cliff face, he entered the grotto, ducking his head under the icicles forming at the entrance and slipping inside on silent feet. He pressed a hand to the stone door, sending the magical field through to the other side. He smiled a true smile as he felt his brother’s soul respond to the magic. Papyrus had felt it too. His yellow magic was always stronger that Sans’.

“Sans?” Came an uncertain voice from beyond.

“It’s me, Pap.”

The door was unlocked with a grinding of stone from the inside, and Papyrus pushed it open to reveal himself in the secret space beyond.

“Brother, it is so good to see you!” Papyrus ushered his sibling inside with that overly-bright smile he always bore. He was good at pretending to be alright, though he was more honest about it nowadays.

Sans sat on a rock that had been covered with a rug to make it more homely. The cave was big enough for one monster to live in comfortably, even if it had been sparse when he first brought Papyrus here. He brought furnishings from the Waterfall dump whenever he could sneak past the border, to make the place more livable here.

It was maybe fifty years ago that Sans had found this place, and to begin with he used it as a storage area for bits of tech and junk he couldn’t keep in his workshop. When things started to get violent between the citizens of Snowdin and Waterfall - and after the incident that left him too impaired to continue his scientific work - Sans had moved Papyrus here. He had known that Papyrus would try to reason with Undyne and her brutes, stop them from declaring civil war with Snowdin. He couldn’t let him get hurt.

Papyrus was safe here, even when the others started to turn on each other. Sans kept quiet when they started to whisper about him, and about why they hadn’t seen Papyrus in so long. He never revealed the truth to anyone. It wasn’t worth the risk. His reputation could burn if it meant keeping Papyrus alive.

He took out his satchel and handed it to his brother, who gratefully took it and emptied the food into a crate.

“You look well, brother. Have you been sleeping better?” Papyrus asked.

“...No.” Sans began. His brother waited patiently for him to collect his thoughts. “Found a human… ‘few days ago.”

“Wowie, you did?”

Sans could hear the concern in Papyrus’ voice. Humans were to blame for all of this.

“Thought she was gonna die, but. She’s not… don’t know how she survived.”

Papyrus waited again. He had become used to his brother’s disjointed way of speaking, the hints in his body language that told him Sans had more to say. Sans took a breath before he continued.

“She got. Injured… Gotta make sure she’s good-... good meat. Before I, uhh…”

“Before you kill her?”

Sans sighed deeply. Disclosing the news was making him realise the extent of his reluctance to kill a human. Or this human specifically. He’d only done it once before, and it wasn’t something he enjoyed the way some of the others did. He ran a hand over his skull, and his finger came to rest in the curve of his socket, where he tugged on it. The pain grounded him, for a moment.

“You reached out to me when you got here, didn’t you?” Papyrus asked, trying to bring Sans back out of his thoughts.

“...It’s makin’ me stronger. Havin’ her soul around. Look.”

Sans lifted his hand towards a stack of books on the other side of the room. Blue magic encircled the top one, and it rose from the pile and floated steadily over to land in Sans’ palm. Papyrus beamed at him.

“That’s incredible! You have your magic back!”

Papyrus always worried for his brother. Especially after the ‘accident’ with Undyne that left him nearly powerless. Hunger and stress made his condition worse. He was slower than he used to be, didn’t make jokes much any more. Papyrus wished he could say that he was relieved to be rid of those awful puns, but in truth, he missed them.

He missed living with his brother too, but they had argued long and hard about the situation and Papyrus had slowly come to understand. They had been honest with each other. Sans wanted him safe more than anything, more than life itself. Papyrus accepted that.

“I am glad, Sans.”

Papyrus placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder, and together they ate Waterfall Gems and talked about humans past and present, until the encroaching dark convinced Sans that it was time to return home.

Chapter Text

All things must end...

The skeleton had been gone a long time. It was already dark, and the firewood had run out. The silence had Kit anxiously pacing in front of the window. Should she risk trying to break free? The monster was more likely to return with every minute she wasted.

A stray thought gave her a sensation of mixed hope and remorse: he might have died out there.

She took up her staff before any more time passed her by, and with apprehension stirring in her stomach, she tested the planks on the window. Too strong, and set so close together that she couldn’t get her staff between them. She gathered up all her things and went to test the other exits.

She had more luck with the balcony window; the planks had been secured in a way that suggested they were to stop something getting in, rather to stop her getting out. She lay down and wedged the staff underneath the bottom plank. It slid behind easily enough, but she couldn’t maneuver it enough to get any leverage.

From her pack, she took her pocketknife and jammed it into the space where the plank was nailed down. With the help of both tools, the plank was worked free. She moved on to the next, already feeling the ache in her arms from the effort but refusing to rest.

He could return at any moment, and he would catch her in the act of escape. She doubted at this point that he would kill her for it; whatever sadistic motivation kept her here seemed to dissuade him from damaging his toys too badly. All the same, if he caught her doing this he probably wouldn’t give her another opportunity to escape.

When several planks were removed, Kit's fingers sore and her breath short, there was enough space to reach the door handle. It had a simple deadbolt for a lock. She had to push on the door hard to clear the snow piled up on the outside, but she made it, crawling through the gap in the planks and almost cheering when her lungs took in a crisp breath of icy air.

Freedom.

She had to get down from the balcony by climbing over the rail and dropping to the floor below. It was a long fall, but the snowdrifts caught her and she landed cleanly between the house and the shed without jarring her weaker leg too badly. She didn’t look back, gunning it as fast as she could to the treeline despite the slight limp.

She got her bearings and headed in the direction she hadn’t explored yet, past the village to the east. The air was thick with fog, maybe a waterfall kicking up spray as she could hear the river nearby. She kept up as much speed as she safely could through the fog bank, her lungs working hard in the cold air.

It didn’t take her long to reach the end of the snow. The white ground gave way to smooth blue rock. A cave within a cave. The slate formed a natural tunnel that curved away into darkness. Kit took a steadying breath, and headed on.

This new tunnel was incredible. Unlike the humid darkness of the first cave, or the bruised half-light of the snowy area, this place was lit by countless tiny crystal formations in the rock. The light they cast was blue and ethereal, and illuminated the floor of the chamber which was covered with a layer of glittering powder, like fine sand, making this part of the cave feel like an underwater grotto.

Kit padded along silently, scuffing up the thin layer of powder. There weren't many turnings for her to be confused by, and a crevasse on her right kept her orientated. She could still see the light reflected from the snow into the cave mouth. Several waterfalls trickled across the path, and off down into the darkness on the right hand side. She could hear rushing water below.

She came upon a chamber with a high roof. The river was closer to the surface here, and its waters shimmered with bioluminescence around the reeds at the bank. Similarly glowing flowers grew around a ruined structure. Closer inspection proved the structure to be a similar little shack to the one she had stopped at in the snowy place, but it had collapsed and its roof was shattered. The flowers wove their stems through the debris.

Kit investigated carefully. The petals were pale, like the surface of the moon, reflecting the droplets of concentrated blue light that gathered on the stamen and pooled around the centre of the flower. It was the same light as in the crystals, and now that she thought about it, those mushrooms the skeleton had fed her. She reached out and touched a petal.

Soft, like silk, like angel feathers. How unlikely, that something so beautiful would exist here. Her movement knocked one of the drops of liquid light from the stamen.

" You leave me no choice... "

Kit jumped back and slipped on the wet rock. It spoke. The flower spoke?

"Hello?" She asked.

Nothing. When she had recovered from her surprise, she shuffled back up to the flower and touched it again. As a droplet of light fell into the pool in the middle of the flower, it spoke again:

" Hello? "

She nudged it once more for good measure- she could hardly believe what she was hearing.

" Hello? "

It sounded just the same; a recorded snippet of her own voice, playing from the rippling waters in the centre of the flower. She grinned.

She got to her feet and began running her fingers over other flowers in the chamber. All their messages seemed to be similarly threatening:

" I'm not going to argue with you. "

" You know why I can't let you pass. "

" This is for your own good. "

" Get lost, or else! "

In places where the flowers were clustered together, they would all echo the same thing. Some of them only played incomprehensible noises, or the sound of splintering wood - perhaps the ruined building collapsing. She found one that played a voice that she recognised. When it began to speak, a jolt ran through her:

" Why are you doing this? "

The skeleton. She couldn't mistake his resonant voice, and it held an undertone of such betrayal and hopelessness that Kit's heart twinged in guilt. The statement wasn't aimed at her, but it hit home all the same. She sat down heavily amongst the cluster of flowers, setting them all off again. She shouldn't feel empathy for these people who would hunt her down and kill her.

...Or at least hunt her down and keep her.

She filled the empty discomfort by beginning to sing an old lullaby that she was taught by one of the people in her clan. It was in a language she didn't understand, but she had learned the shape of the words from repetition on cold nights by the fire. She sang to the flowers around her, especially the one that had spoken in the skeleton's voice, overwriting his solemn appeal.

When she had sung the whole lullaby, she tapped one of the flowers to let it repeat the song to her. When it got part-way into the song, she tapped another, and another, until they were singing in harmony, overlapping in a round.

Her heart felt light, more so than it had in years, as if her lost siblings really were sitting beside her. She sang along with them, letting the flowers repeat the song over and over. It was peaceful, and it drowned out the dread a while.

A brilliant shaft of light the same teal as the flowers struck Kit straight through the chest. The sharpened point embedded itself into the bed of flowers in front of her, and a searing pain flooded her body. Another spear of light thudded into her hand where it lay on the ground, as a shape loomed in a plume of fury behind her.

"It's about damn time." Came a voice that she recognised: the threatening voice echoed by so many of the flowers in this clearing.

Kit was held in place by the spears of light, and her eyes went wide. On impulse, she screamed, as loud as she possibly could.

▵▾▵▾▵

Sans knew that something was wrong from the second he got home. He caught her scent in the snow all around the house, and he couldn't hear the subtle hum of her soul that he had grown accustomed to as his deadened senses returned.

The silence sharpened his anxiety as he crossed the threshold. No sounds of her tiny heartbeat, no disturbance in the air. Gone. His soul flared. What made him so sure she wasn’t just hiding again?

He didn't bother to walk upstairs, he might already be too late to stop the inevitable. He took a breath, and he was on the landing. Good. Shortcuts working again. He tore open each door in turn, getting more frantic as the inevitable was confirmed. She wasn't here, some bastard had got in and-...

The balcony. At the end of the hallway. The stripped planks were scattered about the door, and the bolt was slid across. Not broken. Unlocked from inside. The little rat had taken the opportunity to escape while he was with Papyrus. He hadn't thought she was strong enough to do something like that.

A snarl rose in his chest and he charged from the house, throwing the door wide and letting it bounce on its hinges.

Tracks. Still fresh. Easy to spot. Heading towards Waterfall. Towards her . He couldn't let that tyrant have his prey. He'd found this human, just like he'd found... the one who caused all this. He wasn't about to let her slip through his fingers as well. He needed her soul - he had recovered so much power already, he could do so much more if he kept her for longer.

He made it about halfway to the caves before he heard the scream. His anger overflowed.

Sans ripped a tunnel through space, tendrils of inky magic scorching the snow and melting patterns into the surface. The void took him into its lightless grasp like an old friend, and pulled him through the dark of the space between worlds.

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit scrambled as the spears faded out of existence, releasing her and leaving a burning pain but no visible wounds. She pulled herself up and made a mad dash for the nearest exit - further into the cave. She was cut off by a wall of the blue weapons, rushing up through the floor to block her path. She turned to face her attacker, and her hand slipped into her back pocket.

“Human!” Bellowed the monster. A crown made of teeth was tangled in a shock of matted crimson hair, and a single yellow eye contrasted starkly with the blue of her scales. “You made a mistake coming here. I won’t let you escape!”

The creature charged at her, spear in hand and yellowed, uneven teeth bared as she cackled in deranged glee. Kit poised ready, discreetly drawing her knife and flicking the blade open. She was cornered, nowhere to run, and hugely outmatched for weaponry. She waited for an opening.

As the monster reached her, she slowed and brought her weapon high. There!

“I’m sorry!” Kit shouted as she raised her puny weapon to meet the undefended stomach of her opponent, slashing across where the creature’s ripped clothing left her soft scales bare. She ducked away as the creature stumbled, to sprint to the other side of the cave towards the entrance she had come through.

A white spear tore past her shoulder this time, leaving a long gash in her clothing and the flesh of her upper arm, and shattering against the wall. She swerved, but the next two white flashes knocked her to her knees as they lacerated her hip and injured leg. She shuddered to the floor, howling in pain and rage.

In the doorway ahead, she could see the shapes of several other monsters silhouetted, drawn by the sounds of the fight. They blocked the way - even if she could keep running, there was no way back to the village.

She had got so far, this wasn’t how it was meant to end.

She turned to face her fate, the yellow of the monster’s eye leering down at her as the creature laughed and bled a trail of that same shimmering powder that littered the floor. She approached menacingly, certain of her victory. Kit brandished her knife.

A strong wind kicked up in the chamber, picking up all the dust - the monster blood - from the floor and spiralling inwards to form a column in the centre of the room, between Kit and her attacker. She covered her eyes while the aquatic being stopped in her tracks, baring her teeth in confusion.

A bone-shaking roar spilt the air. The first thing Kit recognised was that red searchlight eye, brighter, stronger, wilder than the yellow, materialising inside the column amidst a bottomless tear in the fabric of reality. The second thing she recognised was the rush of utter relief filling her heart.

▵▾▵▾▵

The skeleton tore through into the chamber, his roar echoing around the room as he found his feet. The first thing his senses registered was blood. The strong scent of it, the soft skin of the human torn and bleeding from her shoulder and leg, spattering the blue stone. The second thing he registered was boiling rage, and his vision went red as his eye flared to fill his socket, spilling over with his newfound magic.

He turned slowly on Undyne as the dust column settled around him, liquified determination running down his cheek and sparking in the air. She braced herself not a moment too soon as a diagonal column of bones as thick as tree trunks burst from the floor, cutting her off from Sans and the human.

Undyne was impacted right where she was already wounded, and thrown backwards by the force, but recovered quickly, panting and furious. She sidestepped another wave of bones and made her retaliation, three spears rushing up from beneath Sans. He felt the magic below his feet in time to correct his position minutely, and the spears whipped harmlessly past and shattered against the ceiling. It felt good to be able to do this again, without fearing for his life.

“What the hell?! How are you-...” Undyne’s eye flicked from Sans to the human. He watched understanding dawn on her face as she looked from him to the person he was risking himself to defend. She spat a mouthful of dust onto the ground.

“Ohh, you fucked up real good this time Sans. You can’t seriously be intending to keep that?” She jeered. “You should know better than any of us what humans bring. Are your powers really worth all that suffering?”

He tipped his head, working through the long string of words. A smile formed on his face.

“I dunno… You tell me.”

Now to try something a little more difficult. He clenched his fist and reached for Undyne’s soul, surrounding it with blue magic and waiting until he knew she could feel his hold over her before he flicked his wrist and sent her flying into the wall.

She crumpled to the floor, but as befits a warrior blinded by vengeance, she stumbled upright immediately, shaking off the indigo magic and glaring at him, her breath coming laboured. He wasn’t even tired yet.

She made one of her more predictable moves of launching a pair of spears from either side, which he sidestepped with incredible ease. He’d fought this battle several times without his powers, what did she expect to achieve beyond the harm she had already caused?

Another spear pair from the front and behind, which met in the space he had been standing and shattered in a cloud of crystal shards. He stepped backwards through the void and he was behind her.

“Step off, Undyne.”

His voice made her spin on her heel to face him, and a barrage of badly-aimed spears were thrown frantically outwards. He hardly moved to avoid them. She was transmitting her magic so obviously before each attack that even with his slow reaction time he could easily detect anything she threw at him.

Sans uttered a deep, rolling chuckle.

“...I’m back, beach .”

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit watched in awe, maintaining her distance and staying low to avoid the flying shards of spear and bone. She could run for it while the two alpha predators had their territory dispute. She glanced behind. The other monsters were crowding into the doorway, three or four of them looking on with just as much astonishment as Kit, thankfully ignoring her in favour of watching the spectacle.

Kit turned back to check for a clear path to the other side of the room, and took an opening as soon as she could. This time. This time she’d get through.

Even if it killed her.

With the monsters facing each other, one working pair of eyes between the two of them, Kit would be able to sneak around the left side of the cave, on which they were both blind.

She kept her attention on the fish monster, betting on having more chance against the skeleton’s slower reactions if he spotted her. He seemed engrossed though, still dodging attacks and grinning madly, while the grin of his opponent had slipped into a grimace of concentration.

Kit made it halfway around the room, and as she came level with the skeleton a column of blue embedded itself through her torso and into the wall. She turned her head, locked in place, and the attacker was leering at her. She gripped a red, barbed trident as tall as herself, and a bubble of green energy formed around the skeleton as she turned her attention away from him. His sockets widened in surprise, and his eye went dark. The fish cackled again.

“You’re dead!” She cried.

Kit’s body bypassed her mind to react to the oncoming attack. In the second before the monster rushed her she experienced so many thoughts at once.

She went through possible ways out, methods to defend herself, considered what was going to happen to her if she didn’t. How the skeleton wasn’t going to be able to save her, why he would even want to.

She felt the weight of her knife in her hand and the spear through her core began to lose substance just as the monster charged her. She heard the skeleton bellow something from inside the forcefield. Something that sounded like ‘run’.

Fight, or run away?

Another tether inside her mind snapped.

She had always run away, and look where that had got her. Enough was enough.

She put her back to the rock face, one foot braced flat against it. The monster covered the ground between them and as she came within reach, Kit summoned all her courage and kicked off the wall with a shout, launching herself up to meet her attacker, knife plunging deep into the creature’s shoulder as the trident missed its mark and swiped upwards, clipping Kit above her eye.

The assailant howled and swung the shaft of the glaive to throw Kit across the room. She rolled, bounced, and came to a stop, gasping, seeing stars. She braced herself for the end, but instead there was a visceral tearing sound and an unsettling wail from nearby.

Kit opened her eyes to see dust pouring from the shoulder of the fish monster, the knife now looking like a needle between the fingers of the skeleton, who stood over Kit defensively, somehow having broken free of his prison and ripped the weapon out of his opponent's flesh, leaving a huge slash down her chest.

While she stumbled and leaked that strange glistening substance, grasping at her side and writhing in pain, the skeleton stepped back over Kit and hoisted her on one arm to hold her to his chest, the knife disappearing into his pocket. His contact sent a static shock through her and she could feel the thrum of energy that coursed through him in a rising current as he raised his spare hand.

"You've taken enough from me, Undyne."

For a split second, the fire in his eye socket danced yellow-blue, so bright she had to look away. A shape materialised beside them, and revolved to aim its maw towards the wounded fish. That resonating note that accompanied it permeated everything around them, she could feel it in her stomach as it expanded with the blast of white-hot plasma that formed between the teeth of the horned skull.

The sound rose in intensity, sunk into the fabric of reality, so low that it was almost inaudible, so powerful that the air danced in a heat haze and the dust lifted from the ground and was pushed away from the origin point.

The skeleton put his spare hand on her head and pressed her face into the fabric of his jacket, covering one of her ears and shielding her eyes from the light as it burst forth.

The silence was almost more deafening in the aftermath.

▵▾▵▾▵

Sans breathed a shaky sigh and adjusted his grip on the back of the human’s neck. He kept her face pressed to him until they cleared the cave entrance. He didn’t want her to see what was left. Just like he wouldn’t want Papyrus to see what had become of his friend from all those decades ago.

He cleaned his shoes of dust in the drifts at the border of Waterfall. A few Snowdin residents were watching from the sides of the road, heads bowed and sharing whispers as they let him and his prey pass without question. None of them made a move to challenge him for the human who shivered in his arms. He had reaffirmed his reputation. He would defend what was his, and he had made that very clear. Within a day, the whole area would know what he had done.

Maybe Papyrus could come home now.

Back when things were sane, he wouldn’t have dreamed of killing a monster - especially not the honourable warrior Undyne used to be. A week ago, he would have died trying to win that fight. Now, with the human who wriggled against his chest to stare back over his shoulder towards Waterfall, he was strong again. He might be the only one left to defend the Underground.

After 70 years, he was ready to accept that responsibility.

Would it have come to this, if he had been able to act sooner? Could he have stopped that little demon from cursing them to be trapped here until the end of time?

He was dragged from his melancholy by the human shaking his shoulder. Apparently she had been talking to him.

"-anyone in that big empty skull?"

"...Huh?" He grunted.

"I said, put me down." She looked up defiantly into his eye, her own wild, dark eyes reflecting the light, the left one squinted to stop the cut on her eyebrow bleeding into it. "Please?"

"Are you… going to run away again?"

She broke her gaze and gave that stubborn little huff of breath, the one that he had learned meant he wasn't getting an answer. He was too tired for her troublemaking, but she squirmed and pushed at his hands, so he crouched to let her step down.

Her weak leg gave way and sent her into the snow, and Sans tried to help her stand but she pushed him away. Her injuries didn't seem to bother her as she turned and headed on through the dim light, not looking back.

He let her keep the pace back home. Every other step she took, a spatter of blood would be left behind. The human was engrossed in looking at her hands, turning them over and holding them up to the light.

"It's blood?" She asked.

"...Yeah. Undyne hit you...?" He didn't really catch her meaning.

"No," she stopped walking, "I mean this. It's blood, right?" She held her hands up closer to his face. The ruddy light caught the glimmer of dust on her palms.

His eye constricted.

"D-dust. It's dust. Dead monsters."

"That whole cave, that was all…?"

"Yeah." He confirmed sadly.

He leaned down to scoop up two large handfuls of snow. To his surprise, she didn't pull away and allowed him to take each of her hands in turn, rubbing the snow into her fingers and palms until it melted and cleared most of the dust away. She avoided meeting his eyes.

Quietly, she asked: "Did you kill her?"

He frowned, his hands stilling in their work. Why was the little beast making him feel guilty? He'd saved her life!

"...Wouldn't you have?" He retorted, aggravation rising.

"Oh, I would if I stood a chance. I wasn't accusing you." She shrugged her hand from between his and brushed down her clothes to get rid of as much of the residue as she could. She raised a brow expectantly.

"So, did you?"

Sans studied her. She really didn't seem as phased as he would have expected, now that she had recovered. Even facing off against Undyne, that fire in her eyes never went out. It was a challenge to everyone. A challenge that he found himself accepting without question every time she looked at him like that.

"That- that woman… Undyne ." He growled her name, and the human's attention was locked on him at the tone of his voice.

"She did this to me." His hand slipped up to trace the edge of his socket, one fingertip hooking over it.

"Why?"

"Too much of a threat… This. This made me weak. Took my power away." His eye trained on her for a moment before he turned away and took the lead, mumbling: "...But not now."

Sans lead the rest of the journey back home. One or two Snowdin residents were tailing them, he could sense them among the trees, but they were keeping their distance. He mostly trusted the human not to wander when he wasn't looking, though he did turn back to watch her walking in his footprints once or twice.

The fire he had seen in her eyes had ignited in his soul too, a feeling that he hadn't experienced in a long time. Confidence. Pride. Just one win; after all these years he'd taken something back. His eye drifted back over the small form of his captive.

His memory might not be what it was, but he would remember this human, as he had the others. He would remember her… almost fondly, when she was gone.

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit exhaled a long breath that steamed around her. The skeleton kept looking back over his shoulder, so she made a show of stopping to check the new wound on her calf. It was barely a graze - nowhere near as bad as the one on her hip - and it had stopped bleeding already.

When she was sure the skeleton was fooled, she took the opportunity to slip her pocketknife back under her leg wrap with shaking hands. The monster had been busy zoning out for a while whilst carrying her, so she'd carefully retrieved it from his pocket.

She took another deep breath before she stood. The sick, detached sensation of shock had set in. She'd rarely had to participate in violence before. She always chose to run away first: she wasn't one to hurt people unless she had no other choice. Now, someone was dead, and she had helped to cause it.

She accepted that there was no alternative, but without her actions, that monster would almost certainly have survived. Kit - and perhaps the skeleton - would be dead. Was that a fair trade? The life of one murderer for another murderer and his 'pet'?

She was beginning to conclude that that's what she was now - the skeleton's pet, or perhaps a doll - a possession that he apparently valued enough to kill for. She hated it, but no matter how she fought her fate, it seemed inevitable 

It was like that flower monster had said, in that first cave, a distant memory after all that had happened: it was better than being eaten.

When they got back inside, she let fatigue overcome her and curled up at the foot of the sofa, kicking off her boots. She watched disinterestedly as her keeper locked the door and shuffled over to light the fire.

Her cold fingers found the wound on her side and prodded it. She had to bite her cheek to stay quiet. Oh, okay, that wasn't great. It was quite deep, a decent slash right across her hip bone that was still sticky with fresh blood.

She pulled her bloodstained baselayer free and inspected the cut properly. It was at least tidy at the edges, but she would need to heat some water to clean it properly, and it would need stitches. She rolled upright and headed for the kitchen to search the cupboards for a pan.

As she went about washing a dented pan and filling it with water, she made the mistake of letting her mind whir in the aftermath of shock.

Was it her fault?

Had she caused this, killed someone?

Was there anything else she could have done?

...Would she be dead, if it weren't for the skeleton?

When she returned to the main room with a pan of water in her hands, the red searchlight fell over her. The skeleton's hand was outstretched from where he sat on the floor. Her heart skipped, but she feigned ignorance and padded over as calmly as she could to tend the fire, turning her back on him.

"...Where is it?"

"Hmm?" She didn't turn around. She was worried that if she did, he would read the lie in her expression.

"You took the knife."

"No? I thought you had it." She shrugged, busying her hands with adjusting a fresh log in the fire. "Maybe you dropped it in the cave?"

"No. I didn't..."

She didn't answer, blowing into the embers to get the fire up to heat.

"...Human. Where is it?"

She heard him move behind her, and her hand slipped down to her thigh where the blade rested.

"Why do you want it?"

The skeleton sighed. "Give it back. Please."

Her rebellious nature fought to the surface, bitter heat coming with it. "It's mine. You could have taken it off me before."

"I didn't know... What- what you were capable of, before."

Kit made the realisation that he might actually be afraid of her. She spent so long gnashing her teeth, growling, putting on all the charm of a feral child, and he had been so guarded, showing no emotion aside from those rare flashes of fury.

She hadn’t been afraid of him since the incident with the mushrooms - some barrier in her mind had given way, and left her unphased by his intimidating appearance and booming voice - but could it be that her unpredictable violence towards the now-deceased monster had managed to shake the skeleton?

Somehow, this began to make her angry.

She was the threat here? She was the one in trouble at the end of all this? The prey taking the blame for the actions of two territorial predators? The tiny, crippled human wrapped up in this plot of endless bad turns and violence, now reaping the rewards for having the audacity to try to survive this hellish place?

“How dare I stick up for myself, huh?” She said darkly. She slipped the knife free from its binding and flicked the blade open, keeping the movement out of sight against her leg.

“Human?”

“Fine.” She snapped. “I have it. But...”

She turned to face him as she heard him begin to move, and his pupil constricted to half its regular size as he focussed in on the weapon.

“But it’s mine, and I’m not giving it to you.” Kit continued. She ignored the wobble of her legs and stood, exuding as much presence as she could. With the monster knelt down, she could stand almost eye-to-eye with him, and her glare reflected crimson. She didn’t intend to use the weapon, she just wanted to even the odds a little.

“Human.” His voice was a warning. “Give it to me.”

He reached forward, but she held her hand away, high above her head.

“No!”

Her frenzied voice inspired a flash of sparks from the monster’s eye as his brow raised in surprise. She heard a growl starting deep in his chest cavity. He closed the distance between them without actually moving. His hand went around the fist with the knife and pulled it up high but she was ready, still full of the sickness of adrenaline.

She let her weight hang from the wrist he held and lifted her legs to kick his chest solidly, sending them sprawling in opposite directions. She landed with tears stinging her eyes as a shock of pain ran up from her hip, and as she pushed up from the floor, the monster came back down upon her, pinning her with a roar as he had the first time she had encountered him.

His huge hands either side of her head, one caged over the fist that held the knife, his breath close and hot on her face. That red eye filled her vision up completely, drowning her in its light. She curled up her legs despite the pain and kicked again, and kept kicking, until he released an even more ferocious roar and threw his weight down to stop her, pinning her legs still and bringing his face so close to hers that the red from his eye ran down onto her cheek. The tears burned and tingled on her skin.

All she could hear as his breath, laboured and hoarse, all she could see was crimson. She could feel his growls reverberating through her body, his ribs crushing her own.

She screamed in rage, beat her empty fist against his shoulder while the hand with the knife twisted and wriggled to get free.

“Let me go!” She shrieked. “Let me go, or kill me!” She felt him tense up. “I am so. Completely. Done with this game, monster!” She threw back her head against the floor to emphasize her anger. “You won’t let me live, you won’t let me die, so what alternative do you leave me?”

With one last effort while he reeled and tried to comprehend her screams, Kit ripped her hand free from his grip.

At the same time as she felt a searing pain in her hand, the skeleton howled and was gone from above her. She rolled over, heaving a deep breath where the monster had squashed her under his bulk, and brought up her hand to see the source of the pain.

The pocketknife had folded closed around her fist, sinking into the outside edge of her palm, splitting the flesh which began to bleed profusely. She hissed and dropped the knife, quickly pulled her hand wrap down to bind around the wound, but as she did, she noticed the knife blade, caught in the firelight.

There was that dust again, coating the blade and spilling onto the floor where he had been.

She wrapped her hand hastily as she stood, suddenly her thoughts only held the notion that she might have done something truly awful, that she could have accidentally…

...

The skeleton was backed against the furthest wall, panting, the light in his eye tiny, shaky and dim. He looked at her for just a moment with a flicker of true terror in his expression, before the eye snuffed out and he slumped back against the wall. Kit was beside the monster before she could think.

“Shit, I didn’t mean to-” She reached for his hand, and lifted it with both of her own to turn it over and inspect the damage. The silvery residue coated her fingers, while the blood from her own palm smeared starkly across his bones. The monster’s finger bones were an inch thick, and a scar ran diagonally across three of them.

Only as deep as the cut on her hand, but judging from his response, monsters couldn’t take as much of a beating as humans. Kit stared up into his face. No response. She could hear him breathing unevenly, but the usual hum of energy that accompanied his presence was absent.

She wouldn’t have two lives on her conscience.

She stood up so that she could reach her shaking hands up to the monster’s face, and looked into his eye sockets, not really knowing where to begin performing first-aid on such a creature. A dim glow was visible, like a dying star in the void of his left socket. The liquid light that had leaked from his eye left a vibrant tear-track over the dirty pale of his cheekbone. She felt tears hot in her eyes too.

“Hey? Monster?” She shook him gently by the shoulders, and the light flickered in his eye. Her voice caught in her throat. “Can you hear me?"

She nudged him again, and this time when the light sputtered into life, it stayed on, a tiny misshapen glimmer, blurring and sparking intermittently.

"Skeleton?"

The response was a strained whine, and his eye managed to focus on her, shivering. Another red tear rolled steadily down his cheekbone.

Kit impulsively reached up and wiped the tear away with her sleeve, and the monster flinched and tried to pull away, which in turn made Kit jump. His eye met hers, and a silent realisation was made between them.

Kit let her legs give way to fold her to the floor before the giant beast.

“Fuck.” She breathed a relieved, exhausted laugh. "Why do we keep doing this?"

The glow that lit the space between them brightened as the skeleton's pupil condensed into a more stable shape. When he found the energy to answer, his voice was coarse and quiet.

"D-doing… what?"

"Fighting like this. I'm-..." She looked up with a sad smile. "I didn't mean to hurt you. Really. I'm sorry."

The monster shrugged his broad shoulders.

"'S okay."

Kit fiddled with the fabric around her hand. The dust was all over her clothes and skin. She slumped, and admitted with a waver in her voice:

“I… I don’t want to do this any more.”

“Hm?”

“I’m so tired. Tired of fighting, racing against the inevitable in every single aspect of my life. Of being cold, and afraid and confused and- and...” She paused, realising her increasingly distraught ramblings were leaving the skeleton behind. She tried again, slower. “Please, tell me what’s going on?”

The monster frowned, clearly still struggling to comprehend.

“Are you going to kill me?” She asked more simply.

“...Not today.”

She clicked her tongue, frustrated. “Why stop that other monster, if you’re just going to kill me at some point anyway?”

“S-should’a done that years ago...”

“But. Why bother keeping me alive?”

She waited, but an answer never came. The skeleton looked down at the gouge in his fingers and remained silent. Either he didn’t register her question, or he didn’t want to answer. Eventually, she gave up and went back to the fire to start heating the water.

She had to sit with just her thoughts for company while the pan nestled in the embers and heated slowly. She fetched her backpack and found her needle and thread inside to set nearby, and peeled her baselayer away from her hip, wincing at the amount of congealed blood peeling from her side.

This was going to be fun.

She waddled upstairs, impeded slightly by the sting of her top rubbing over the wound as she walked. She snagged the darkest-coloured towel she could in the airing cupboard and brought it down to set beside the needle and thread. The water still wasn’t boiled.

While she waited, she pulled off her leg wraps and inspected her weak leg. The new injury was small, it wouldn’t even need disinfecting. At her ankle, the ring of scars was still inflamed, but the bruises had receded to a mottled yellow. The scar would be quite pretty once the marks faded to white, like a permanent anklet, and what a story…

A story told reverently by no-one at her snowy grave? Like they did back when the clan was still together? She was the only one left now. When he killed her, all those stories she carried for the others would be gone, too.

She glanced up at her captor. Emotions flared, threatened to overflow. Anger, sadness, regret, but to what end? She wished he would just tell her the truth.

He caught her looking, and his pupil expanded.

“...What are you doing?”

She blanked him out of spite. Her eyes were hot again. She had lost so much of her resolve since she came here. What happened to the girl who let nothing phase her, let nobody get under her thick skin?

Kit heard him move, but she felt rooted before the light and warmth of the fire. She hunched up small, and was relieved when the water finally began to boil, giving her a valid reason to carry on ignoring him. She took the towel and dipped it a little into the water, bringing it to her skin and hissing at the heat. It was good pain, though, she reassured herself - it would help keep the deep cut clean.

She was aware of the red orb following her every movement as she methodically cleaned the area around the wound. As she soaked the dried blood away the wound opened back up. This towel was definitely ruined forever, but it didn’t seem like the monster cared. He didn’t really appear to use them anyway.

When she was satisfied that the injury was clean, she took her needle - tiny and curved, perfect for sutures - and threaded it, sterilising it in the boiling water. She was dreading this part, especially with the monster watching, but she needed to do this. She’d had someone give her stitches before, but never had to do it to herself.

First time for everything.

She lifted the needle back out of the pan, and it caught the crimson light over her shoulder as it spun on its thread. She dipped her fingertips into the water too, cringing but keeping them there long enough to cleanse them somewhat of grime and dust.

She lifted the needle, and pulled up her shirt, bunching it between her teeth to keep it out of the way and stop her from making noise. She took several steadying breaths, and with one hand pinched the wound closed. The other came down to make the first stitch.

Behind her, the skeleton took a sharp breath.

“No. S-stop.” He discouraged. She continued to blank him. “What are you doing?!” His tone was much stronger this time, and he reached for the hand with the needle.

“Don’t touch me,” Kit warned, “I need to do this or I’ll get sick again.”

Before she could elaborate, two arms were wrapped around her middle with undeniable certainty, and she was lifted back against him as she had been before, spine pressed against his ribcage.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, can’t you lay off for five minutes? Let me-!”

Kit was cut short with a gasp as the room was lit up by a soft blue-green glow from behind her. Her captor adjusted his hold, one palm as big as her face coming to rest, hovering over the wound.

She stopped struggling, and watched as the green light spiralled down in rivulets around the skeleton’s forearms, like ivy threading between the bones of his palm. It was the same thing he had done when he first caught her, but much brighter now. As soon as it made contact, it seemed to magnetise towards the injury and converge at the edges, highlighting the most damaged areas and sinking into her skin.

With it came a wave of relief and comfort. She was prepared for this, it had happened last time too. What she wasn’t prepared for was the sheer intensity of the emotion. It was utterly overwhelming, like being embraced in a bubble of affection and familiarity.

She tried so hard to keep her barriers up, but the tears that had been welling since the fight brimmed anew, and as soon as one escaped, more followed unhindered. Despair came pouring in to fill the hollow in her chest in the wake of her lapse of fortitude.

She let herself lean back, and after a while he motioned for her to bring her leg up to her chest. She complied, tears streaming silently down and soaking into the collar of her top. She took comfort in the knowledge he couldn’t see her tears in the half-light. She knew from his previous severe reactions that he hated it when she cried.

His fingers coaxed the green glow to the cut on her leg, and then he turned his palm upright and let more particles lift from it to hover like fireflies above his fingertips. They stayed there a moment, before being drawn back towards Kit, travelling to locate the other injuries on her shoulder and face.

He pressed his palm to her shoulder almost tenderly, letting that sensation continue to flow through her. She sniffed, and covered it by asking;

"What is it, this light?"

"Green magic," he replied in a whisper, "...for healing."

"Doesn't it hurt you to do this?"

"Hurt…? No." After a moment of silence while they both watched the drifting lights, he continued. "Not… Not any more."

"Any more?"

He was hesitant to reply, and quiet when he did.

"Y-you. Having you here… makes me stronger."

"Oh, so that's why you're keeping me?"

"...Maybe."

She turned to face him, expression full of suspicion and shining with tears, and began to say something spiteful, running her mouth again, but she was cut short when the skeleton raised his hand to her face, green strands of energy still weaving between his bones. She stiffened at the contact, but his sharp fingertips held her very gently in place. His other arm curled around her waist to make her turn and face him fully.

Her suspicion melted away beneath the renewed blanket of magic, and she watched his pupil analysing her features, flicking about and contracting into focus.

"No." He murmured, and wiped the tears from her cheek with the rough, warm bone of his palm. He leant forward, pressing her to him as he reached over for the towel and dipped a corner into the water.

She had to scrunch her eyes shut as he soaked away the blood from the cut on her brow that she had forgotten about, now healed by his magic.

The monster chuckled, making her look up, one eye still closed.

"Y-y'almost… look like me," his finger traced the line from her eyebrow, where it had bled down onto her cheek, "all, all scratched up like that."

Kit found herself reaching to mirror his action, and his gaze locked warily on her movements. He didn't pull away though, and she took the towel from his grip to wipe the crimson from his cheek in return.

He stayed very still, all the miniscule adjustments and flickers of his eye so visible at this distance, as if she might read his thoughts in the surface of that orb.

▵▾▵▾▵

He was so very aware of what she was capable of now. The creature in his arms - calm and almost showing affection now that he had exerted the extent of his magic on her - it felt so unlikely that something so small could do so much harm.

He should have killed her tonight. But the proof of her usefulness was in the well of power already replenishing in his soul.

The human finished her needless act of wiping the magic residue from his skull.

"You said she did this to you?"

He nodded almost imperceptibly. The human puffed her cheeks out as she exhaled, making her look young, childlike.

"Good riddance." She threw down her towel for emphasis and shuffled in his grip, but for once, she stayed there. Maybe she had given up?

No… that fire was still in her voice and her eyes when she spoke again.

"Thank you - for keeping me alive. I don't get why you're doing it, but I'd like it if-" she peered up at him nervously, "-if we could stop hurting each other?"

He snorted a one-syllable laugh.

"...You attacked me."

"And? You attacked me first. More than once!" She gave a huff and turned her back on him.

The fire crackled, and filled the silence while the two of them were lost in thought. It didn’t seem to bother the girl to sit in his lap like this, his gigantic, scarred forearms looking all the more monstrous beside her doll-like form.

That was right, wasn’t it? He had attacked her first. He openly admitted his plan to eat her, but even from the beginning, Sans wasn’t sure whether he had intended to carry out that plan. He couldn’t remember whether he had ever truly trusted his own motivations.

“...I-I won’t.”

“Won’t what?”

“Won’t hurt you.”

She laughed, and he felt her ribcage expand against his.

“Sure, whatever.”

She shivered, and he instinctively held tighter. If she noticed, she didn’t react.

“Skeleton?”

“Hm?”

“What’s your name?”

He grunted, confused. “...Why’s it matter?”

“It doesn’t.”

He was getting used to her tones of voice; he could tell she was going to shut down into that cold, cruel state of mind again.

“...Sans.”

“Sans.” She repeated quietly. “Thank you, Sans. I’m Kit.”

“I won’t remember.” He admitted. It was a name that suited her, but he wouldn’t know it by the morning.

“It’s okay. Most people don’t name livestock.”

By the time he had realised her meaning, it was too late to say something. What could he tell her? He was keeping her in a cage, after all. Instead, he frowned and shut off the light in his eye to stop the incessant hum of it. He rubbed absently at his sternum, wishing he was better at words, that he could explain the ache in his chest when he looked at her. At Kit.

Soon, he could feel her beginning to resist sleep. He’d noticed her muscles begin to twitch, then relax, and then she was start upright again. He took pity on her, pushed her from his lap to the floor by the hearth and draped his jacket around her.

When he went upstairs to sleep, it was nearing dawn. Perhaps he’d give himself a break tomorrow. He hadn’t shirked his daily duties since Papyrus left. Time to put an end to that responsible streak.

Chapter Text

Mine...

When Kit finally awoke, she spent a few minutes in that sickening limbo state of mind between consciousness and dreaming, unsure what time it might be. The fire had gone out a long while ago by the looks of it, but it was at least a little light in the room.

The skeleton’s jacket was still wrapped around her shoulders, which she was grateful for in the chill. She rose slowly, checking her new scars. They were looking incredibly good for being a day old: the one on her leg was almost invisible, while the one at her hip was still obvious, but faded and sealed as if it had been weeks since Undyne had attacked her.

Thinking about the events of yesterday brought on a new wave of guilt. Kit pretended to be certain that the fish got what she deserved.

She busied her thoughts with tidying the mess from yesterday, setting a new fire ready to ignite when the monster - Sans , he had a name now - came by to light it for her. The pan of now-cold water was emptied and cleaned, and the stained towel was thrown in the bath: she'd do her best to wash the blood and red magic out of it later.

She packed away her needle and thread, and then she found the knife. He hadn't taken it away this time.

Rather than steal off with it again, she left it folded up on the kitchen table. It felt like a better option if they were being honest with each other now. She wasn't going to trust Sans, but she had enough proof that he wasn't going to kill her. She could afford to let her guard down a little and prove herself the same.

Sans came downstairs shortly, in that state of quiet stupor he sometimes went into.

"Morning." She murmured.

He didn't seem to register her words, but greeted her by an absentminded hand on her head and a click of his fingers to rouse the fire, saying nothing and slouching off to the kitchen.

When he went outside, he left his jacket behind and returned shortly after with an armful of fresh firewood and snow on his shoulders.

"Storm again." He grunted as he set the logs down.

"A bad one?"

He offered his hand, and Kit returned an inquisitive expression but complied. His fingers were still warmer than hers despite the fact that he had just been out in the snow.

He lead her to the door so that she could peer out and marvel at the dense wall of white beyond. Immediately, a flurry of snow attempted to rush in and cover them both, and Kit gasped and ducked behind the skeleton as a wave of sickness came over her and a shock of phantom pain ran up her leg. That much snow brought on bad memories. He shut the door again quickly.

"Fuck that." She exclaimed, trying her best to laugh her adverse reaction off and retreating to the fire. Sans chuckled and nodded slowly.

He stayed in the house all day. Kit didn't ask why, or what he was doing as he shuffled about in the upstairs rooms. She respected his privacy and found that she really didn't mind the detached company too much. The sounds of his presence kept the maddening boredom and loneliness at bay.

▵▾▵▾▵

Sans spent the day organising Papyrus' room. He wasn't convinced that it would be safe to bring his brother home yet, but it brought him solace that he might be able to live with him again someday soon.

All the pieces of electronic scrap were scooped up and stacked neatly at one side of the room. He didn't have any idea what he had intended to use them for when he had salvaged them. He certainly wasn't capable of fixing them now - he hardly remembered what most of them did any more.

He gathered up the various odds and ends, sorting them where he could, smiling when he found trinkets here and there that belonged to Papyrus, and amassing a pile of clothing he found amongst the junk.

It was so hard to get around to chores like this without Paps to kick him into action. He did his best though.

He pushed as much of the junk under furniture as he could so that he could ignore it for now, in much the same way that he was using these chores as an excuse to ignore the painful decision he would soon have to make.

His resolve weakened every day that she stayed here. It would have to be done soon.

He left the human - as he had predicted, her name had slipped from his grasp already - to her own devices. It made it easier not to think about the future. She seemed happy with that arrangement anyway; she was almost friendly today, and he hadn't missed the pocket knife lying on the table. He left it where it was.

▵▾▵▾▵

Things improved in increments. A little at a time, the two relaxed into each others’ presence. As Kit began to accept that Sans really wasn’t going to hurt her, she became less timid. Stopped flinching at the sound of his voice. Didn’t lash out so often.

In turn, as agreed, Sans became gentler. His demands became requests, and his requests came less often. Sometimes at night, when they were less likely to encounter other monsters, he let Kit wander outside the house to stretch her legs under his watchful gaze.

As he became less aggressive, Kit began to notice the undertones in his demeanor. She sometimes caught him staring at her with an intense, somber expression that made her uneasy, though she couldn’t determine why.

Their day-to-day life became quite… normal. Not Kit's usual standard of what constituted ‘normal’, but actually civilised; homely even. It had been so long since she had felt healthy - not under-the-weather, not aching or starving or freezing to death. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but they were managing. She grew to understand how to navigate Sans’ more violent outbursts; he clearly had no control over them, and she forgave him quickly when she could read the boundless fear and uncertainty in the fluctuations of his eye.

Maybe a week later, on a particularly stormy day that must have been nearly a month since Kit fell into the Underground, Sans came to linger by her side while she pulled down books from the living room shelves, learning about the place she now lived - ‘Snowdin’. She could quickly tell that it was a bad day for him. The skeleton simply watched her reading in silence for some time, his shoulders tense and rumbling breath uneven.

“What’s up, Sans?”

“I-I have. Have t-to…”

He stuttered, stopped, tried again and cut himself off with a massive shuddering sigh. When he didn’t manage to find his words, she stopped reading and turned to find an expression of utter hopelessness on his face. Almost all his emotions were expressed through the condition of his eye, and it was currently small and dull and downcast in his socket, distorting slightly at the edges, not meeting her gaze.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” She’d noticed him go through these spells of despondency before, but this one seemed worse. She closed her book and set it aside, shuffling to kneel before him so that she could catch his eye.

“Sans, what is it? What’s the matter?”

“I have to. T-to. K-kgh...”

He let out a startlingly gutteral noise in frustration at his stutter and brought his hands up to scrape down his face, one coming to hitch at the lip of his damaged socket and pulling at it. Kit grimaced and reached carefully up to place her hand over his, but he growled and batted her away.

“ No! ”

“Alright, okay, sorry!” She said, vexed, but backing away.

She sat still, too unnerved to move, keeping her breath quiet and even, so as not to disturb his thoughts. She dared not leave the room to let him deal with this episode in private, since it apparently involved her somehow.

She waited until her legs went to sleep from being sat on, and just as she was wondering if it might be safe to move yet, Sans found his words.

“I have to g-go out for longer… today. Like when. When you-” He made a silent plea for her to understand what his impairment wouldn’t let him say aloud.

“For longer? Like you did the day I ran away?”

He nodded uncertainly, staring downwards.

“Then that’s alright. There’s enough firewood for me to stay warm.”

He nodded again, more confident now, and after a long pause and an exhalation of breath, he shrugged off his jacket and handed it to her. He stood with a grunt, and thoughtfully placed a hand on her head as usual.

“Stay?”

Kit managed a tiny smile.

“Okay.”

With just that exchange, the cloud over him dissipated and he went on his way with purpose. When he had left, she occupied herself reading until it became too torturous to carry on with. The monster history books were interesting, but not well-written in the slightest.

Once her attention was exhausted, she messed about in the house looking for things to do. She rummaged through the cupboards and tidied away some odds and ends from the surfaces in the kitchen. Her knife still lay on the table, both of them avoiding the responsibility.

While she was feeling productive, she might as well wash the towel that had been sat in the bath for days. She could wash her clothes alongside it - they were beginning to fit the description of 'crusty' by now.

Now that she thought about it, she had all day. She might have time to have a bath too. That would be wonderful, if the water wasn't freezing...

The water from the bath tap turned out to be lukewarm at best: it would be fine to wash the clothes in, but she wasn't prepared to jump into it herself and risk getting ill, so she filled the largest pot she could find to set over the fire. In the meantime, she stripped off all her clothes and soaked them along with the towel.

Two bathfuls of disgustingly brackish water later and the clothes were almost back to their original colour, discounting some permanent bloodstains. She carried everything downstairs, wearing just Sans's jacket as cover and padding quickly to the fire to hang everything over the back of a couple of chairs dragged in from the dining room.

A discreet peek between the window boards to check she still had time, and she wrapped the handles of the big pot of now-hot water in a couple of fresh towels and slowly made her way up the stairs with it. She had to stop halfway up the stairs to rest, and by then she was freezing. She was looking forward to actually being able to get warm for a change.

Kit managed to lift and drag the pan through to the bathroom, bumping it over the threshold and shutting the door behind her. It had no lock... She would just have to be quick.

She shrugged off the heavy jacket and stopped short of dropping it to the floor. Her fingers traced over the stain on the front from all the red tears that had sunk into the fabric.

Would he be angry if she washed it?

She didn’t see why. Before she poured her bath, she soaked the jacket too, and left it hanging over the tub to drip dry.

He was past the point of killing her now anyway.

▵▾▵▾▵

“I have to kill her.”

Papyrus threw his head back in a dramatic show of rolling his eyes.

“Nonsense. You don’t have to do anything, Sans. The choice is entirely yours.”

Sans fiddled with the empty husk of one of the water sausages he had brought to Papyrus amongst the weekly food supply. The taller brother knelt across from him, an unusually intense expression of on his elongated face.

“We can manage without the food, brother. I am certain of it.”

The reassuring tone did little to make Sans feel better.

“But. But what if she t-tried to kill me?” He clenched his fist, crushing the plant husk. “Like Fr-... like they did. If I died. Y-y-you’d be waiting here. Not knowing… Not-”

“No, no.” Papyrus was quick to shut down that train of thought. “That isn’t going to happen, I’m sure of it!”

“You can’t know that...”

Papyrus sighed, and one slender hand came to rest on his brother’s hunched shoulder. He tried again.

“If it makes it simpler for you, Sans, I don’t want you to kill her.”

Sans raised his face to meet his brother’s eyes, and the red light cast over the paler, cleaner bone of Papyrus’ skull. A look of gentle admiration crossed Sans’ face.

“...Why?”

Papyrus lifted his other hand and slowly brought his index finger to rest over Sans’ sternum. Over his soul.

“I know you used one of your shortcuts to get here. You have improved so much, and I am very proud of you, but I know what the cause is. She is the reason for all of this, your human.”

Sans’ eye expanded, wavered in its socket.

“My- mine...?”

“Yours. So I would ask that you keep her alive, brother. I would very much like to meet her one day.”

Sans slumped, unclenched his fists. His hand slid over to his brothers and held it. Papyrus smiled, and continued.

“On that subject, you said it might be safe for me to return home soon?”

“Uh… Soon. Maybe.”

“That is so good to hear. Not that I mind being here, but I would prefer to live in a house again. I will try to be patient!”

Sans hadn’t told Papyrus about Undyne yet, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He would work out how to say it once he had fully processed it himself. He couldn’t bear to see the look on his brother’s face when he found out his once-ally had been murdered by his own sibling.

Sans hoped he would understand.

By the time Sans left, Papyrus had thoroughly convinced him that there was no valid reason to kill the human. It was exactly what he needed, and a weight was lifted from his shoulders as he trudged back towards town. This morning, he had left the house certain that he would have to end this game when he returned.

Now, he unlocked the door with a flutter stirring in his soul in anticipation for the inevitable game of hide-and-seek, to find the human he had been encouraged to keep by the only person in the universe whose counsel he trusted.

He pulled the door shut softly, and turned to find a hearty fire burning in the grate. All the human’s clothes were hanging around it. Everything seemed to be in order aside from that oddity.

He sniffed, and a pang of anxiety flared when he found he couldn’t catch her scent. He tried to stay calm and as he reached out for her soul, he caught another scent in the place of the usual bitter-iron smell. Something softer, alongside the pulse of her soul. No reason to get in a panic, she was right there. In the bathroom. He paced up to the door to listen, and from the other side, he could hear a sound that was very much alien to him.

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit couldn’t remember most of the words to the song, nor really even the tune. She had been making up the parts that had been lost to time. It was an old song, one she’d heard playing on a pre-war device somehow still functioning in the hideout of a band of traders. She made up new words for it and hummed the bits she couldn’t work out, enjoying being able to use her voice to its full extent.

The blessedly warm water lapped around her, only a few inches deep but enough to bring respite from the endless cold, to chase the ache of it from deep in her bones. She felt like she could snooze here for hours. She released a long sigh, and repeated the chorus of the song to herself, enjoying the way the acoustics carried around the room.

The echoing ambience was shattered and the door flung open as she shot upright, undoing the last hour of relaxation with all her muscles locking up as Sans came barreling into the room.

His eye locked on her, filling its socket to the point of overflowing, bright red spilling free. He rushed to the side of the bath, making her draw back from him and put up her arms to protect herself. What had got into him?!

The monster came to an abrupt halt only inches from her, gigantic talons gripping the edge of the bathtub. His breath was heavy and his gaze never left her.

A drop of magic ran down and plopped into the bathwater, and he blinked, seemed to realise himself. He rolled back and sunk to the floor, just watching over the side of the tub. His expression was hard to translate, almost like shock, or amazement. Kit waited for something to happen, but it never did. He just watched her.

“Sans?”

No answer.

“Sans, what are you doing?” She tried to sound angry, but it fell a little flat.

“...Sing? S-sing again?”

“Oh…” Her frown softened against her will. “Alright.”

She began to sing what she had recovered of the song, and when she had no more words, she hummed the rest. The skeleton seemed to become enthralled, stock-still on the tiles, hands splayed flat either side of him.

When it looked like he was thoroughly lost in some kind of happy trance and wasn’t intending to do anything else unpredictable, Kit went back to relaxing in the warm water, washing off the remaining grime and running her hands through her hair to pull the tangles out.

When she was ready to get out, Sans was still dormant on the floor. Should it matter? It didn’t really bother her for him to see her like this, this was just the skin she lived in after all, and she had no reason to be ashamed of it, despite all the scars and discolourations. He had seen her at her lowest, she didn’t have enough dignity left by now to be worried about things like decency or vanity. Besides, he was a skeleton - there was no way he would care about seeing her weird human body.

It felt odd, being comfortable completely exposed in front of another person. Kit might have feared being eaten by him at one point, but she had never been scared that he might take advantage of her: that was more than could be said for most of the humans she had known.

She stepped out, to no response from the skeleton, dried herself in a monster-sized towel and briefly studied her reflection in the mirror. Wow, she looked like a different person. Older than she remembered, but brighter, healthier. She had almost forgotten what colour her skin was under all that ingrained dirt.

She tucked the towel securely around her and turned to look at Sans, who was still absent.

“Hey? You alright bud?” She reached and put a hand gingerly on his shoulder, and watched his eye react, constricting back to a normal size. He twitched and cleared his throat.

“Uh-huh…”

“Right. Cool. I’m gonna go sit by the fire, okay?”

▵▾▵▾▵

Sans nodded slowly, but when her words resolved in his mind he jolted upright and rolled forward from his slouched position so that he was kneeling in front of the human.

“W-wait. You can’t.”

“What? Why?”

Sans leaned further towards her tiny form.

“...You. Smell human.”

“Really?" She snorted. "You know, I can’t help that.”

Sans’ arms came around her to bundle her tiny form up against his chest despite her attempt to step out of his reach.

“The others… they’ll smell you.”

“As if they couldn’t already! Look, most of the other monsters probably know I’m here, so what difference does it make?”

“...No. I was careful… They don't know."

He held her tight against him, that being the only solution he could think of. It might seem like an overreaction to her, but the difference was glaringly obvious to his senses. Dust, dirt and death were everywhere in the Underground, and while she was covered in it, it disguised her. But not any more. It was like a bed of roses in a mortuary, and his only hope to keep it concealed was to mask it with his own scent.

She squirmed around to face him with a huff, and he just held on tighter.

"Stop it!"

"No... Where's the jacket?"

She leant back to indicate behind him.

"I washed it."

The jacket was hanging by the bath, looking more vibrant than he remembered.

"...That too?"

"Yeah. Uh. Is that alright?"

He gazed down at the strange, soft little thing in his arms. So small without all the layers she wore to protect her fragile body. Patterns and marks all over her skin, from years of endurance and hardship, no doubt. Like Sans' bones.

So small, so damaged, and yet so thoughtful. Without an ulterior motive, nothing she did was was malicious. She just did helpful things, every day she was here. She couldn't do much, especially when she was injured, but he noticed the little things. His handicap might make him slow with speech and action, but it didn't make him any less perceptive. He noticed.

Amongst his thoughts, he forgot to answer her, carrying her downstairs to set her beside the fire. He made sure it was still burning well before briefly leaving her there to head outside and around the side of the house. He pulled down and snapped several leafy branches from the pine trees, bringing snow down over himself from above. He returned with them quickly.

One branch went straight into the fire, and the others were stacked up nearby. Pine-scented smoke quickly filled the room as the damp branch crackled in the grate. That would help.

He stayed a little longer, and brought down one of his shirts, greyish but relatively clean, for her to wear for good measure. His scent should mask hers well enough along with the pine smoke. When he was satisfied, he made his nightly checks and retired to his room, neglecting to prop the cabinet behind the door like he normally would.

He didn't need to worry about the stranger in his house. He might not remember her name, but she was a stranger no more.

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit was awoken by a faint scratching noise, alien and unnerving in the darkness. Upstairs. Sans? It sounded too delicate to be caused by him. She rolled upright just as there was a metallic click from the landing, and the scratching stopped. Should she bother investigating it?

Obviously.

Curiosity hadn't killed this cat yet.

She stayed low to the ground and crawled to the foot of the stairs, keeping her breaths shallow and quiet. No sound now. On all-fours, she padded upstairs keeping every movement silent. It was easy to do while wearing just the oversized shirt Sans had given her; not even the shift of fabric would betray her.

She made it to the top and leaned around to look to the left and right. The half-light from outside cast a beam down the hallway and fell across a small, round shape in front of the door.

Her sixth-sense told her the shape was very definitely alive, and behind it the balcony door had been forced open, letting in a freezing air current. Her eyes struggled to focus on the dark mound until it turned to face her, and the bulbous, transparent cap of a gigantic eye glistened in the half-light. She saw claws, four sets of them, curved and thin like paring knives.

It was a comment on how comfortable she was around the skeleton that her first action, rather than to freeze up and hope that she went unseen was to scream Sans' name as loud as she could before scrambling back down the stairs.

She sprinted for the kitchen, where she knew her knife was lying on the table, but halfway across the room she was stopped by the claws of the creature latching on to her shirt. Oh, not again! She stopped dead and fell backwards on top of the monster, hoping to crush them. They were smaller than her, but they rolled out of the way - their body was completely round aside from four stumpy limbs.

She had barely a second before the claws reached for her again. She had to find something to fight back with, she was unarmed and nearly unclothed. Her staff was too far away. The only other option was-...

She dove to the right, out of the monster's path and towards the fireplace. She snatched a handful of still-hot ashes and turned to dash them at the eye of the monster, who screeched, surprised, and fell back to blink and clutch at their watering eye.

Kit took the precious extra seconds to pull a stick loose from the fireplace, brandishing the charred end towards the monster.

"Stay back!"

"Ha!" The monster barked, the mouthful of needle-teeth below the eye becoming visible as they grinned hungrily.

A noise from upstairs stopped them both dead, a rumble like the ominous tremor of a volcano, a warning shot, the first peal of thunder. The intruder's eye widened, while a venomous smile formed on Kit's face.

"Oh no," she mocked, "you're screwed now."

A snarl came from the monster and they launched themselves at her in one last-ditch attempt to achieve whatever they had come here to do. Kit swiped up with the charcoal-laden stick but the weapon was knocked aside as two sets of claws came around to latch onto her shoulders and she was bowled over, scrabbling on the floor, both fighters screaming and scratching at each other.

Kit clamped her teeth down on the nearest stumpy arm, barely keeping the attacks away from her face and causing the beast to howl. Dust coated her tongue, making her gag, but she had to keep fighting, she couldn't rely on Sans to save her again. He was taking too long, she began to worry he wouldn't arrive in time as the eye monster gained the upper-hand, before their snarls were interrupted by a thunderous bellow.

"Kit!"

Her heart leapt. She couldn't see him, but the resonance of Sans' voice suggested he was close by. Tendrils of ultraviolet surrounded the monster on top of her and they were ripped away, their little body slammed hard into the wall before being dropped abruptly.

Skeletal hands planted either side of her as the eye monster righted themselves and bared their teeth. A show of intimidation wasn't going to have any affect on the enraged skeleton though, whose response was to unleash his fury with an all-encompassing roar which she felt throughout her whole body, radiating outwards from her core:

"She. Is. Mine!"

Sans advanced, leaving his protective position above her to close in on the monster, crawling with menacing slowness and looking more like a gigantic, feral bear than ever. His eye flared, dripped red onto the floor where it glowed like embers.

Kit had an idea.

"Wait Sans!"

She scrambled to her feet and grasped his shirt, pulling on it. There was an unnerving moment where she thought he might not register her plea in time, but he stopped with his fingers splayed inches from the intruder as if he was intent on crushing them in his hand. The monster had backed up against the wall, their eye wide with fear.

Kit ducked under Sans's arm and approached, feeling skeletal fingers grip her shirt hem, not pulling her back, just holding on nervously. Kit stood between the two monsters, Sans overshadowing her, and her overshadowing the other monster. There was no fear in her demeanor. When she spoke, her voice was even and assertive.

"Now, monster, listen carefully. We're going to let you go," to her relief Sans didn't dispute her, or try to interrupt, "but you are going to go back to Snowdin, and warn anyone else who thinks it would be a smart idea that if they try to attack us..." she leant forward, right up until she could see her reflection in the monster's eye, "...they’re dust. Do you understand?"

As if on cue, a tear from Sans' cheek rolled down from where he loomed above, dropping onto the pale fabric of Kit’s shirtsleeve, hissing and flaring before sinking into the cloth. She smiled darkly, not flinching at the tingling warmth of the magic. She could read all the fear, relief and realisation in the monster’s eye, she didn’t need them to respond. She stood aside, and Sans followed her lead and did the same, allowing the monster to make a break for it back up the stairs and out through the balcony door.

▵▾▵▾▵

Without a word, Sans scooped up His Human against his chest and carried her back upstairs. On the way, he secured the balcony door with a grumble. He needed to get the planks nailed down there again, but he’d forget to do it by the morning, as he had every day since they had been taken down.

Sans shouldered his door open and brought Kit across the dark threshold and over to his bed. He set her down and stepped back to shut the door with indigo magic, lifting his cabinet across to shut out the world.

“Sans?”

He failed to respond, deep in his work making the place safe and comfortable. It was too dark for her human eyes to see very much, so he hoped that she wouldn’t judge his choice of living space. One half of the room was a collection of electronics, books, papers, and trinkets. In the other half of the room, the floor was hidden under a hoard of blankets, pillows and duvets collected over many years that made up a sort of nest, which he used as a bed. Kit looked so tiny sitting there in the middle, swamped by all the mismatched fabrics around her.

“Sans?” She repeated, and this time he heard her.

“Hm?”

“You remembered my name.”

“...Oh? Oh. I-I did… Kit.”

He hadn’t even realised it until she pointed it out, but somehow her name had manged to lodge in the shattered recesses of his head, only to be recalled when he wasn't thinking about it. He smiled widely, before some remnant of his past self bubbling up to the surface of his consciousness urged him to continue:

“Nice to... ‘eat you, Kit.”

He felt as proud of himself as she looked. To his relief she had understood the joke, and was smiling properly despite the fact that he could see she was bleeding yet again, red spots coming through the fabric of her shirt.

He sunk into the nest beside her, there still being plenty of space for him to get comfortable, considering how little of it she took up. Green magic came to him so easily now it was laughable. He could do anything with her here. He healed her wounds in silence, hovering his fingers carefully over her arms and shoulders.

He braved it and let his fingertips touch her skin. Cold, smooth like nothing he had ever felt. She always wrapped herself up in all that raggedy fabric, and now he could see and feel why. His awareness was captured totally in the thought of how delicate her skin was compared to his bones, how easily damaged she really was. He could cut her just by pressing a little too hard, probably without any effort, and yet, she had survived in the Underground somehow. All the scars on her skin proved just how much she had had to fight in her past.

"How… how is it that. You survived this long?"

She appeared to be broken from her own deep thoughts, lifting her head slowly.

"You mean down here?"

"Hmm."

"Well, I've only been here… what, a month now?"

"... Only ? T-that means you were out there. Before you met me, for… f-for how long?" This much thought-processing was tiring.

"Before you captured me? Uhh, nearly three weeks."

"Three? Three weeks on your own. Without food or a home or…? But. But you're so small. How?"

"I've been living like that for a decade, dealing with monsters instead of humans doesn’t really make much difference."

His soul shuddered, and his hands came to rest on her shoulders, holding on as if she might fall apart.

"T-ten years… on your own? Are you a runaway?"

"No. I just ended up alone."

He couldn't quite parse the information.

"Alone…? But no home or…?"

Kit frowned, looking up into his eye. Sans liked it when she did that. So unlike the monsters who shied away and avoided his gaze, she studied his eye intently, seemed to actually understand and connect with him. She took him seriously, but she wasn't afraid.

"You don't know about the war, do you?"

"No…?"

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit shuffled the collection of bedding around her until she was buried up to her chest in comfort. This was honestly amazing even with Sans still gripping her shoulders tight, she hadn't been this comfortable in years. If she'd known this haven was in here the whole time, she would have broken in just to get a good day's rest while Sans was out. He was still watching her closely.

"There was a war on the surface." She explained. "Human society - homes, governments, civilisation - that's all gone. 'Humanity' now is just people like me, trying to walk a knife edge to some pretence of security. Did you think we had it easy up there?"

"I-I didn't think. That's why you're- uh…"

He looked her over then glanced away, embarrassed. She smiled.

"Why I'm almost as bony as you? Yeah. We're starving on the surface too."

Sans seemed almost disappointed, until he appeared to draw a sudden conclusion, his eye contracting and sharpening in on her again.

"...The war? When?"

"Uhh, it started about twelve years ago, I guess. Why?"

"There were earthquakes… Bad ones. Caused cave-ins. We thought it b-blocked the entrance since no humans came down... after…"

"That was twelve years ago?"

"Uh-huh."

"Then they weren't earthquakes. Those were bombs."

His eye went wide, glazed over, stared vacantly through her at this new information. His hands stayed heavy on her shoulders, but comfortingly so now that that was all out in the open.

She hadn't talked about all this. Not really ever. She hadn't unboxed the dysphoria associated with losing her entire society, let alone the death of her family. The priority had always been surviving. She hadn't ever had time to get emotional about what she had lost, and there wasn't anyone who would have comforted her. There was always something more important. Warmth. Food. Safety.

She had those things now.

Thanks to this monster.

She found herself suddenly so grateful to be alive, almost enough to bring tears to her eyes. She was genuinely safe here. She shuffled closer to Sans, hoping the movement was imperceptible to him. The rolling tide of his breath and ever-shifting red glow that might once have been a reminder of her captivity was now her rock in a stormy sea, keeping her calm and grounded. He was the constant. The only redeeming quality of a world that wanted to eat her alive.

Kit had no idea why he hadn't. He could have from the beginning. Would have been easier to do that than keep fighting to keep her here.

"Why didn't you kill me?"

His hands twitched, and he drew her closer. She wasn't complaining - he was warm, and she had become used to the sensation of his knobbly, bony claws on her arms.

"Not going to."

"No, I know that. I mean, why didn't you to begin with?"

"...I. I was going to-..."

He was refusing to make eye contact, so she couldn't read his eye too well as its light diffused over the muddle of blankets around them.

"What made you change your mind?"

"You… m-made me strong."

"You mean magic? Can you do those things just because of me?"

"I'm broken."

Kit sat upright, frowning.

"No-"

"Yes." To her surprise, he cut her off. "I am. I'm-..." His hand crept up to his eyesocket and latched there. "Monsters generate magic. I can't. It doesn't work…"

"But it does when I'm here?"

"Hm. Y-your soul. Is bright." He managed to hold her gaze for just a second before sheepishly turning away. Mysteriously, his skull seemed to be giving off a faint glow, but it might have been the stark contrast thrown by his eye in the dark.

"My soul is bright? I'm guessing you aren't talking figuratively when you say that."

Sans just grunted, but he managed to turn and look at her again, and yes, his cheekbones were definitely giving off a gentle blue-white glow, enough to illuminate the covers bunched between them. Sans' hand, still lying close to Kit in the bedding, lifted slowly to rest over her heart, hovering close enough that she could feel the heat from his bones. He dropped his other hand from his eye socket down to reflect the action over his own chest.

Concentrating intently, Kit began to feel a pull, as if there was a string connected through her chest from her heart, and Sans was holding it gently while his hand lingered over her. With her awareness totally fixed on the sensation, she found she could feel a second pulse beneath her heartbeat, humming and fluttering gently under his hand.

She lifted her much smaller hand to the one he held over his own chest, slipped it beneath his, and sure enough, she could feel a similar fluttering hum, slower, stronger. He watched her with a distant, soft expression that she couldn't place, and let his hand press down to hold hers against his sternum.

The thrum was so obvious now, matching exactly the wavering light of his eye, keeping time with every fluctuation.

"Your soul?"

"...Yes." He confirmed quietly, and Kit pulled his hand to press against her chest fully too, mirroring one another, so that she could feel the pull on her own soul more clearly. When his palm pressed over Kit's heart, Sans froze up, his eye flaring and constricting sharply.

"What...?" He pulled both his hands free and took ahold of her around her shoulders again. "W-what. Is that?"

His voice had gone quiet, just a growl in his throat as he pulled her closer, making her gasp as he brought the undamaged side of his head up to press against her chest, where his ear would be if he had them. His breath caught as he held it to listen.

"W-what..."

Kit chuckled nervously. His head was almost as big as her whole torso, and heavy against her.

"That’s my heart. Have you never heard a heartbeat before?"

"...Never got that close to a human." He murmured into her chest.

He went quiet after that, just holding on. He didn’t move from his spot, even when she shuffled about to find a more relaxed position. She tried very hard to stay awake until he broke from his fascination, but eventually she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

Her eyes fluttered closed, reclining in the nest of blankets with a skeleton laying his skull over her core, the hum of his eye like the purr of a placated lion.

Chapter Text

The inevitable.

Sans awoke several hours later to the gentle rise and fall of Kit's chest. He'd had to breathe very softly to hear her delicate heartbeat, and doing so had brought on drowsiness so gently that he hadn’t noticed himself falling into it. What had happened to him, that he found himself willingly sleeping in the company of someone else, let alone a human? He felt his soul softening, and it should have scared him but he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn.

He lifted his head an inch to watch her. His eye cast her skin in rouge, and accentuated all the divots and marks, life’s impressions on the surface, like the ones on his skull. His fingers traced lightly over the deeper ones, and up to her eyebrow where a fresh, thin score left by Undyne's spear travelled up into her hairline.

His fingertips followed up into her hair, and he was amazed that anything could be so soft. Now that it was clean, it was a completely different colour from the matted, dried-blood brown it had been when he first saw her. He found himself running his fingers through it, strands tangling and looping between the joints of his finger bones before falling away in a veil.

He was so enchanted that he forgot where he was, forgot all about the tiny ball of warmth curled up beneath him. She shifted and made a soft noise of contentment, and his soul gave an unexpected, almost painful shudder. The sensation was enough to scare him, one he didn't understand or recognise, an ache so deep-rooted that it traversed along his ribs and down his spine. He tangled his hand further into her hair, the unknown feeling causing him to hold her closer.

Kit startled awake at the movement, and an array of emotions flickered over her expression. He found it was one of his favourite things about her, when her thoughts projected so plain for him to see.

Her sleep-heavy eyes settled on him, and after a moment of befuddlement, she smiled . He'd never seen her look that way, a smile that showed her teeth, wide, like Frisk’s had been at the end… His pupil stuttered as it blew out to its full extent to take in possible threats. 

Why? Why was she smiling that way? He locked up, processing as fast as possible every inch of his surroundings. What had she seen that he hadn't? A weapon? He searched for the knife. Rope. Anything. There wasn’t any indication of danger. So why was she…?

His thoughts ground to a halt as her hand reached out to grip his where it was still twisted into her hair. He flinched, but her touch was slow, careful.

"It's alright Sans." Her voice was low, melodious as though to lull him back to sleep.

His fingers slipped to hold her much smaller hand, and the tide of a memory rushed over him, as they sometimes did. Tiny human fingers grasping his own as they trudged in the snow, him cracking quick-witted jokes, making light of their dire situation like he always had. Keeping smiles on peoples’ faces and pulling on a grin of his own despite everything.

When had he stopped doing that?

Why had he stopped being the one that made people laugh and become the one that made people afraid?

Kit’s fingers squeezed his tighter, drawing him out of the memory. He shook off the weight of the past, and took in her expression. The smile reached her eyes, enough to make them brim with tears, the light from his own eye twinkling back at him. There was care in that smile, honest and gentle.

“Hmm…” He frowned as he studied her more closely. “Y-you have a good smile.”

This only made her smile more, and he found that for once, he could return it without pretence. It hurt his cheekbones, but not in a bad way. Like waking up after years of forced sleep.

“Thank you. So do you, Sans.”

▵▾▵▾▵

When Sans actually smiled, it transformed his face completely. It looked so natural on him in a way she didn’t expect, so sincere, and for a moment, she’d seen a white light flicker in his empty socket. His head slumped forward again, one hand upon her shoulder and the other still tangled in her hair as he relaxed back into sleep, seemingly comfortable.

The constant, gentle warmth of his bulk cradled her, and brought on a feeling that she was sure he was experiencing too, something she couldn’t remember feeling in her whole lifetime. Complete safety.

Somehow, Kit had managed to tiptoe her way through the minefield of his defences, the oppressive aura of unhinged distrust he kept up around him, and she had come out the other side, looking back to find a protective, warm bubble securing her place here beside him. The reassurance that she could sleep in his arms and wake up with all her limbs intact. That he would defend her, and that they would be able to face the world’s hostilities without having to worry about watching their own backs.

For the first time in her life, she fell asleep without any doubt that she would wake up again.

It was easier after that. Kit was sure that Sans had reached the same conclusion she had. He kept closer watch over her now, spent the next few days masking her scent by burning pine needles, firmly bringing his jacket around her as soon as it was dry. He stuffed the pockets with pine needles too, revealing a big hole in one of them that left a trail of needles wherever she went.

He didn’t flinch at the sounds of her presence any more. Sometimes, he picked her up and carried her around without a word of explanation. At night, he shut them both in his room, pulling the cabinet across to keep them safe. It was clear that he had very much meant his statement about Kit being ‘his’.

Weirdly, it wasn’t unnerving: it was comforting.

She wondered - with a foolish naivety that she immediately kicked herself for - whether he thought of himself as ‘hers’, too. But he didn’t mean it like that. In his eyes, she was his prey. When he said she belonged to him, as with all the things he mustered up the effort to speak aloud, he was being straightforward and without nuance - she was his possession.

That was okay.

She took a needle and thread to the jacket, on a quiet afternoon while Sans sat nearby, breath rumbling gently as he lost himself in that statue-still meditation of thought that he often slipped into. She repaired the hole in the pocket and all the frays and tears she could see. The fabric was a lovely colour when it was clean, and she tried her best to hide the grey thread with tiny stitches that wouldn’t show.

She was proud of her work, and hoped Sans would be too when he returned from inside his own head. She looked up just in time to see a red track of magic run down his cheek and splash onto his hand, to no response from him.

Sometimes, when he got like this, she would experience a sort of feedback similar to when he used his magic. A change in air pressure, or a vague emotion washing over her out of nowhere, giving her a sense of what he might be thinking. When that sensation came as a wave of intense loneliness or fear, she wished she could take his hand, but she didn’t.

She’d learned not to disturb him from these episodes; there was a risk that he might come back angry and disturbed, and refuse to give any response but to growl, or he might return beneath a heavy cloud of melancholy that would linger for days. She would just have to wait for him to come back on his own, watching over him from nearby.

He wasn’t gone long this time. She was contemplating by now too, staring into the fire and getting lost in the scented smoke, creating a list of things she might be able to do around here now that she could walk and run and climb properly again. A deep intake of breath from her companion alerted her that he was back in the present.

Before she could turn around, or show him the repaired jacket, he halted her train of thought.

“I’m going to get my brother.”

The unbroken nature of the statement told her he’d spent time working out how to say it. She was the one who stumbled now, momentarily unable to respond, not quite comprehending what he’d said.

“You have a brother?”

“Papyrus. I’m going to get Papyrus.”

She drew a blank, no words presenting themselves. A sibling? He had a living relative and had never thought to say so? He must not have trusted her with the information, which stung a little, but she understood. She took a breath to gather her rattled thoughts, by which time Sans had risen and made his way to the door with purpose.

“Wait, Sans,” she urged, allowing for his slow response time, “take this with you, it’s fixed now, look.”

Kit raised the jacket for him to take, and his long talons pinched a fresh seam, rolled it between them to inspect it. His eye constricted to a pinprick, focusing tightly on her work, then blew wide to gaze at her softly.

“Tha-Thank you.” He murmured, but after an extended moment where he simply stared at her, he pressed the cloth back into her hands. “...But you keep it.”

“It’s yours though. You’ll get cold.”

He chuckled deep in his throat.

“Don’t feel the cold… it goes- goes right through me?”

He grinned uncertainly at her, the expression widening as a bark of laughter escaped her. It was still such a surprise to hear jokes coming from a creature who so recently had threatened to eat her. But that memory had faded, and as it blurred she couldn’t be sure that his suggestion of eating her hadn’t been a joke too.

The laughter still tickled her as Sans laid a gentle hand on her crown. A habit, or a ritual. He still did it, even though he seldom said the accompanying word: ‘stay’. He knew she would. He left the key in the lock for her, and as he departed she mulled over that last thought.

He knew she would stay. This was her home now.

If he brought his brother here, would that change?

Dread began to flood her body. Would his brother want to kill her, like the other monsters did? The bubble of security she had settled into would burst, and she was sure she wouldn’t be able to trust another person the same way; until this point, the life she lived had taught her never trust anyone but herself. If his brother came here, it would mean a return to the incessant anxiety of being hunted.

Her feet carried her to the door and she gripped the handle, acting on impulse. If she ran fast, she might be able to catch him before he got too far. Her feet found his footprints, and she made it four bounding steps before she slipped in the compacted snow and came to a halt. Her breath was tighter than it should have been.

It was pointless to follow. She wouldn’t be able to change his mind; his bonds to his own family would far outmatch his loyalty to her. She was inferior, a pet. He kept her because she gave him something to focus on, made his soul stronger, because she would guard his house while he was away. That’s all.

She couldn’t deny that, she’d known it all along. That had been okay until now. Now that there was no avoiding it, it crushed her that her connection to him might be so shallow, might count for so little.

She sunk down into the snow, hands still gripping the jacket tight. At the root of it all, she found that she was angry, angry enough to block out the cold. She had fought for more than two months to make a place here, wounded and terrified and tentative with every action, struggling and scrabbling to safety, and it was to be ruined in less than a day by someone she had never known existed. A threat she couldn’t fight against or negotiate with or run from.

...

She could run though, couldn’t she?

Was this the sign that she had been waiting for, that she should leave? She might be dead by tomorrow if she stayed, now that there was an intruder on his way here, the threat of being killed in her sleep was so much more pressing.

She looked behind her, towards the caves of Waterfall. There was nobody there now. She could get through easily.

Her breath hitched on the cold air and made her cough, tears spilling and staining dark on the jacket, which she drew up around her face and sobbed into, furious.

She knew she was being dramatic, but she let all the emotion - bottled up over years of just surviving, repressing her fears - overflow. She howled into the fabric, aggravated by the scent of Sans that still clung to it.

She balled up in the snow in the middle of the path for the whole town to see, stayed there until her throat was hoarse and her cheeks stung from the tears beginning to freeze. If the residents of Snowdin saw her, they chose not to take advantage of her tantrum. Some part of her dared any creature to come try their hand.

At best, she’d put up one hell of a fight, take her fury out on them and leave them with bruises they wouldn’t forget in a hurry. At worst, Sans would find her blood dappling the snow, and then he need never worry about finding food for her again.

At this point, anger began to solidify into courage, a hot iron in her gut which seared through the last tether of self-restraint with ease. The last remnant of the caution she had lived by was severed, and nothing now held back the irrationality of raw impulse.

She stood, brushed herself off, and slung on the jacket. Her emotions were wrangled back into their cage, her tears dried on her sleeve, and a glare set firmly in place. She was not the kind of person who gave up. She had only lived this long because she didn’t let emotions like jealousy and anger rule her. She could control them: redirect them and put them to use.

She would prove that she belonged, or she would prove that she could survive alone.

She stormed through the town, keys and knife stowed in her rucksack and monsters discreetly watching her follow in Sans’ trail, not one of them seeming to want to impede her as she went. She followed the route she remembered, back towards the deep forest. Her rucksack was quickly filled with sprigs of hawthorn berries, and many of the small, sour apples from further into the forest. Digging through the snow beneath the trees revealed acorns and beech nuts, and by some miracle that she took as a good omen, some kind of wild garlic, pushing up through the drifts.

The hard work made her feel good, useful. Crushed the feeling of hopelessness and replaced it with conviction and the envigorating numbness of exposure. She walked back to the house, emptied her rucksack onto the kitchen table, locked up again, and headed in the opposite direction.

She quickly made it to Waterfall and scrambled about amongst the sharp rocks and iridescent flora until she found what she needed. A patch of blue mushrooms, right down by the riverbank, hiding just above the shimmering waterline. She collected them all, along with the exciting find of some cattails with their seed pods still attached. She cut them down too.

She took the rest of her loot back to the house. Once it was prepared it would all be edible - even those mushrooms should lose their psychoactive properties with heat, and if not Sans seemed happy to eat them anyway. She got to work quickly after checking the fire. Today, Sans and his brother were going to eat like kings. See if that didn’t convince this newcomer to let her live.

▵▾▵▾▵

The walk back to Snowdin managed to be both stressful and relieving. It took longer without the shortcuts, but Sans needed the locals to see this. He and Papyrus strode casually across the town border, like old times, the Canine Unit ahead of them and already spreading the news. Many monsters stared from the treeline, whispers rippling between them, and when Sans caught some of their gazes, they looked relieved. Happy, even. Dogaressa gave him a nod, respectful and understanding rather than fearful. Sans winked.

Sans found the soft smile he had once worn returning to him along with a sense of pride as he walked with his brother in tow, the taller skeleton waving occasionally to the people they passed, neighbours who had thought him murdered by his own brother.

He was focussed on making sure they got home safely, so it took until they reached the porch for Sans to notice the smaller footprints pressed into each of his own. He stopped short of opening the door, soul clenching nervously as he followed the trail with his eye. A fresh track in the snow lead off towards Waterfall. She wouldn’t… She wouldn’t .

A sensation of loss preemptively clutched at him, sparking his magic and sending red droplets sizzling into the snow. There was something bad going on, he could feel it so clearly now that he focussed.

Not hearing his brother’s buffudled question, he burst through the front door. Something was wrong, he had to get to her as quickly as he could before-

A noise made him stop.

She was in the kitchen, and he crossed the threshold still driven by urgency, slowing as he registered that she was alright. She was there, safe and sound. She hadn’t run away.

It was warmer than usual, and a strange scent filled the air thickly. On the table, her knife lay amongst a collection of objects. Acorn shells, broken and scattered in a rough pile, a mass of small seeds with remnants of red flesh clinging to them, sprigs of something green and leafy. Kit stood with her back to him, a pot simmering on the stove in front of her. She remained silent, not making any suggestion that she had heard him enter.

Papyrus broke the quiet by scuffing his boots on the mat loudly, tromping over to lay a hand on Sans’ shoulder and peer down into the kitchen too.

“Hello, human!” He announced, friendly as always.

Kit’s shoulders stiffened, and the tension was almost tangible. She looked up for barely a second before busying her hands once more with tending whatever she was making.

“Welcome home.” She stated, flat and quiet. The same defensive tone she used to use when she was still afraid. He stepped closer, hand outstretched, though he wasn’t sure she would let him touch her. Something wasn’t normal, she wouldn’t even look at him. It unsettled him deeply in a way he couldn’t interpret, to see her act this way with him.

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit sensed his hand at her back before he could touch her, and involuntarily hunched in on herself further.

“I’ll tell you when it’s ready. Why don’t you go and settle in?” She tried to sound thoughtful, though really she just wished they would leave her be so that they wouldn’t see her tear-reddened eyes.

Fear had a tight grip on her, and she hadn’t manged to stumble more than a few steps back from the edge of panic since he had told her about his brother. She had to shut herself off to avoid falling, so her tone remained level and cold. She busied herself tending to the food as Sans slowly backed off, and their sounds receded upstairs.

The food was almost all ready. She cleared the table and set out what crockery she had found that wasn’t broken. One oversized bowl with a chip in it, and a plate that had obviously been glued back together more than once. The cutlery at least was more viable, so she set places with the bowl and the plate for Sans and Papyrus. She could eat the leftovers from the pan when they had had their fill.

She had used the cooking time to sort through her irrational thoughts, and come to the conclusion that she had no right to be jealous. If any of her siblings were still alive, would she not immediately put them first? Before herself, Sans, or any other person alive? Of course she would, so she should try harder to give Sans the time with his brother that he deserved. She was independent of him, she could handle being alone. It was ridiculous for this to have hit her so hard, she needed to get over it.

She could hear the new skeleton’s voice upstairs. He was startlingly loud, not like Sans at all.

She set down the dish she had made with a heavy sigh. Broth, thought up on the spot and adjusted as she went along. It had turned out well, with the cattail pods and roots added once they were determined to taste not too much like ash, as well as the mushrooms, which had gifted their extraordinary shimmer to the liquid. The wild garlic and pine needles had done something for the flavour too, making it a dish she was rather proud of. She might even write down a recipe.

The sour apples, nuts and berries had been roasted gently until they had become shrunken, golden and fragrant. She turned off the oven and left the door open while the pan of fruits cooled inside. She couldn’t help but steal a sliver of acorn flesh to chew on. It tasted wonderful, she was sure she could eat the whole pan by herself.

She pulled Sans’ jacket from where it hung over a chair and wrapped herself back up, taking a deep breath and holding it a few seconds. Right. She was just about ready to face this like an adult.

She made her way to the foot of the stairs to call the brothers down again, then retreated to the kitchen and gripped the serving spoon tight as she listened to them descend.

His footsteps were loud too. She realised as he entered the kitchen that everything about him seemed exaggerated. His height, his voice, his crooked smile. Sans was tall, but his brother was so much taller, having to lean or tilt his head awkwardly against the ceiling. She managed to meet his sockets for just a second, but his height gave her an excuse to keep her gaze around chest height. There was no light in his eyes.

Sans tried to give her one of his intense stares, but she smiled as convincingly as she could to dismiss his unspoken question and indicated the table.

“It’s ready. Take a seat.” Her voice managed to sound inviting at least.

The new skeleton’s smile widened further, his jagged teeth giving him a slightly crazed look as he followed her instruction and sat down. Sans, however, outmatched his brother’s maddened expression as his eyelight blew to fill his socket again and he stared from Kit, to the table, and back. She gestured with the serving spoon for him to sit too, which he eventually managed, once he had recovered his apparent befuddlement.

She served them both silently, the newcomer chattering away enough for five people, though she barely registered it. As quickly as she could, she laid the spoon down to retreat into the living room, but Sans caught her arm.

“You need to eat.”

“I’ll eat after. It’s okay.”

“No.” He sighed, weary amusement in his voice as he twitched her jacket sleeve to encourage her over to his side. “Eat too... please?”

She mustered up the courage to look up, unconvincing smile failing her, and his other hand came around to support the small of her back. His eye adjusted, sharing a silent conversation with her, searching her face, pushing gently back against her defenses. She let herself relax into his grip.

He lifted her easily into his lap with her unspoken permission, making her feel a little like a child, but instantly dissolving her discomfort. His arms enclosed her safely. He wasn’t going to forget about her, that much was clear; she wasn’t being replaced. He lifted his bowl towards her, while his brother smiled and waited patiently to begin eating.

She grasped the bowl as well as she could, both her hands over his, and drank. As always, Sans watched over her closely.

▵▾▵▾▵

Papyrus was quick to overwhelm Kit with compliments, his sockets wide and tiny eyelights sparking with happiness while she began to respond tentatively to the onslaught of his conversation. Sans relaxed in his seat, utterly comforted. Paps was here, Kit was here, and they were finally safe. Dread hovered at the back of his mind, warning him that this was far too good to be true, but he pushed it away. He didn’t care.

All he cared about was right here, and now.

He tilted the bowl back down for his human to take another sip of the incredible stew she had made. He was so proud of her, he was almost embarrassed that she might feel how much his soul was resonating through his entire form. Her fingers were warm for once, overlapping with his own beneath the bowl that was far too big for her. She didn’t once release her contact with him, following his fingers when he moved. The tension he had sensed in her earlier had almost melted away.

“How long have you been staying with my brother?” Papyrus asked, always the more eloquent sibling, even back when Sans could speak properly.

Kit turned in his lap a little, as if he might know, but he shrugged.

“Don’t remember.”

“Me either, I stopped counting.” She smiled at Papyrus, becoming braver with every question Papyrus posed her to bring her out of her shell. Her fire was returning, and Papyrus was responding to it well, not that it was hard to make a good impression on him. She could keep up with his fast-talking far better than Sans, too.

Papyrus nodded sagely. “That is no bad thing. It doesn’t do to count your life away.”

Sans drifted out of the conversation a little, one hand still supporting the bowl while the other absently held Kit against him.

When was the last time he had counted the days? Even if he had the memory for it, he had stopped living ‘one day at a time’. He didn’t need to just survive any more, to count the days until the next time he could visit his brother, until another threat came along... until the inevitable.

When she was here, he felt safe.

Was it the magic? He didn’t think so, the magic wasn’t what made her important.

It wasn’t because she could protect him either, not exactly. She was tough enough to scare off a Loox, but not tough enough to protect him from Undyne. The thing that mattered, perhaps, was that she would have tried anyway. In that moment when he was trapped by Undyne’s magic, Kit should have run and left him. He had watched her face as she flipped the coin, and came out fighting. She would have put herself in harm’s way for him, and he still wasn’t sure why.

Then there was the rest. The things he struggled with that she navigated with ease; the uncertainty of living in a mind he couldn’t fully use or predict, the noise of it that deafened him on quiet days. She gave him time to think, made him calm, brought him back to himself.

He wished he was good at talking like Papyrus, so that he could tell her those things.

Kit drew him softly from his reverie with a squeeze of the hand he held around her waist, reassuring him as she often did when he lost track of his own thoughts.

“You okay?”

He rumbled a noise of confirmation, but words escaped him, his soul humming louder than his thoughts. His eye sputtered, and he lowered his head to press his face into her hair, making her giggle. She was unphased by the glow of magic that coated itself onto strands of her hair before fading. Across the table, Papyrus looked like a child at Gyftmas, orange staining his cheeks softly as he watched the interaction.

Papyrus could be happy now, too.

Kit wiggled in his grip, slipping to the floor and beginning to set aside the plates. Papyrus was quick to help, making a noise of complaint before lifting the pot of broth back over to the stove and securing the lid, Kit nodding her thanks as she took a tray from the oven.

She brought the tray to set it between them, taking something small and golden and reaching to offer it to Sans. It was hardly a morsel for him, but he quickly realised it wasn’t intended for fulfillment alone. It tasted like... home. Kit might have had no magic of her own, but she could have fooled him with all the love poured into the food she had made for them. He couldn’t find an appropriate way to react, aside from to take Kit by the hand where she still waited patiently for his response, and pull her close again, humming contentedly against her cheek.

“Kit, these are wonderful!” Papyrus praised. “How in the Underground did you manage to find something that tastes this incredible?!”

“These are all things that grow quite commonly here. All I did was bake them.” Kit shrugged but Papyrus wouldn’t let her pass her actions off as something so trivial.

“Truly, you must be a mage to make them taste like this. I would be honoured if you would teach me how you did it!”

“I can do that, if you like.”

“Thank you! I am especially glad that I convinced Sans to introduce you to me now!”

Papyrus beamed proudly at his brother, and Sans had the presence of mind to be relieved that Papyrus hadn’t revealed the part of that conversation where he had convinced Sans not to kill the human. Papyrus had always been perceptive, and it seemed so ridiculous to Sans now that Kit could ever hurt either of them.

She seemed to stop in thought a moment, squinting.

“You wanted to meet me?”

“Well, of course I did!”

“But how did you know I was here?”

“Sans told me all about you. In fact, it has been all he’s talked about for quite some time!”

“Oh? Oh...”

▵▾▵▾▵

Kit chuckled awkwardly, her gaze dropping away from the table. Her cheeks were warm, and not just from the broth. Sans had been telling his brother about her?

“Well,” she cleared her throat, “I’m glad I got to meet you too, Papyrus.” She shuffled in Sans’ grip. “I’m going to put the rest of these away so that you can take them with you when you go out, alright Sans?”

He failed to answer, and his grip stayed tight, but he rose to his feet after the words sunk in, easily holding her to him in one hand while he picked up the tray himself with the other and brought it to the cupboard to store it.

“Sans?”

She didn’t get a response, but he seemed content, so she didn’t struggle. He eventually got around to putting her down when he migrated to the living room to tend to the fire. She seated herself near to it, nearly in the same spot where she had sat on the first night she had stayed in this house.

Hunger and cold had been replaced with a steady warmth from within, always there despite the winter.

Papyrus pottered in the kitchen loudly, the relentless noise that accompanied him beginning to fade as she grew used to the idea of another person in the house, becoming reassurance of the presence of friends nearby: it was a safe sound. Papyrus might not have eyes, but Kit could feel the honestly in his soft-socketed expression when he spoke with her.

She knew she had overreacted and was still berating herself for it, especially so now that she knew how harmless Papyrus was, but the sense that something had been left unsaid hung over her, even as the taller brother came to join them and watch the fire. The brothers talked, and Kit interjected to ask questions when she wasn’t letting the flames mesmerise her. The anxiety from before would not shake itself from the pit of her stomach, despite how content she felt otherwise.

The brothers talked late into the night. It seemed they were feeling the same burst of energy that Kit was experiencing, the residual adrenaline of the day paired with getting to eat real food for once. Papyrus asked all about their experiences since Kit had arrived, and where Sans’ memory came blank, she tried to fill in the gaps. She was pleased to note that she didn’t have to fill in very much.

He told his brother about the chase through the snowstorm, grimacing and failing to meet anyone’s eyes when he described the pursuit through the woods. She added to his commentary, spoke of the trap, realising as she did so that she had never verbally addressed the event.

“I don’t think anyone had been there in a long while. The trap was buried, so I didn’t see it. I managed to get out before anyone from the town came to check the traps there.”

Papyrus looked appalled. “You were very lucky that the Canine Unit didn’t find you. Were you badly injured?”

“Yes. I was sure I was going to die, but…” Kit picked up on Sans’ silence, and the guilt on his face was clear. That wouldn’t do. “I hid in the shed by the house, and Sans found me, healed my leg.”

Kit shimmied up her trouser leg to expose the scar, now turning pale, a pretty chain of claws around her ankle. Sans was slipping into a cloud of dejection, one finger hooked into his socket.

“I definitely would have died if it weren’t for him.” She tipped her head, trying to catch his eye. “Sans? I don’t think I ever thanked you for that. So, thank you for finding me. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t ended up here.”

A soft whine of disagreement came from him. “...If not for me, you wouldn’t have been injured.”

“It would have happened later anyway. Probably when I got to Waterfall…” She grimaced.

“Waterfall…” Sans’ expression darkened further.  “Paps… There’s something- something I didn’t...” He caught her eye uncertainly.

Kit realised what he was struggling over. She nodded for him to continue, hoping that her reassurance conveyed to him.

“Undyne. U-Undyne’s gone, she… uh...” He stuttered to a halt, searching pleadingly for words that eluded him.

“She attacked us.” Kit could see the weight lift from him as she took up the strand of conversation. “I tried to run away, but she found me when I got to the caves. We had to fight her off,” she kept her eye on Sans to make sure he heard her too, “she couldn’t handle both of us.”

Sans’ sockets squinted, then widened. He knew what she was up to, and it seemed like he might correct her, but she pushed on before he could paint himself guilty for the encounter.

“We killed her.” The admission tasted like ash, like the dust that Undyne had become.

Sans frowned. His eye shifted and refocused as he seemed to begrudgingly accept the slightly altered telling of events. Kit had been secretly terrified of him after that day, but grateful. How could she not be? They could both have died to that monster. Papyrus cleared his throat.

“She’s really gone?” His voice wavered.

“I’m s-sorry, Paps.” Sans mumbled.

“It’s alright, I think. The people of Snowdin will be safer now. Undyne had become a tyrant - she wasn’t my friend. Not any more. Not really.” Despite the level tone of his voice, he lacked conviction. His fingers twined around each other nervously.

“It doesn’t have to be alright.” Kit tried to reassure him. “You are allowed to be upset. I was, too.”

“I know. I’m alright, thank you. I will be fine, this is just quite a lot to take in. Undyne was my best friend once, but after what she did to Sans, I don’t think even I could have forgiven her.” Papyrus physically shook off the darkness that had gathered around him and stood. “Today has been a long day. I think I might go to sleep.”

His hand came to rest for a long moment on his brother’s shoulder, a motion that reminded Kit of the gentle hand Sans laid upon her head each day before he went out. Then, he turned to smile at Kit. “Thank you for the meal you prepared for us, you really didn’t have to go to so much effort for my sake. I think I will very much enjoy living with you. It is good, to be home.”

“I think I will enjoy living with you too. Goodnight.” She returned the smile as warmly as she knew how. Her impression of him was so much better than she could have imagined.

Papyrus waited patiently for his brother to register his movements, and Sans slowly raised a hand to place it over Papyrus’.

“Night Pap.” He sounded torn somewhere between contentment and melancholy.

With that, the three became two again, as Kit was left alone with a still-frowning skeleton. She tried to lighten the mood, coming to sit beside him on the sofa with an outbreath of amusement.

“Of course the little brother of the biggest pushover in the Underground would be the nicest person I’ve ever met.” She nudged Sans’ elbow, barely moving him. His frown lessened as he looked up.

“You like him?”

“Of course I like him. He’s lovely, Sans.”

His gaze drifted to the staircase, and then slowly swung back across the room to lock on her again.

“...Why did you lie to him?”

“It wasn’t a lie.” She reinforced her words with all the certainty she felt.

“You told him. Told him ‘we’ killed her.”

“We did.” She wouldn’t budge on this one. She would have lied to Papyrus outright and taken the fall for the murder if it meant keeping Sans out of harm’s way.

Ten seconds to gather his words before he answered confidently.

“I know what happened. I do... I’m not that bad at r-remembering things.”

“And I’m not that bad with a knife.”

Her weighted statement stopped him short, and for once she pushed on rather than awaiting his answer.

“You know what happened, and you know I would have died eventually if you hadn’t been there. I’m not going to pretend I could have won that fight alone, but it’s like you said - I would have killed her if I could.”

“But. But... you didn’t. It was me.”

“I buried the knife, and you twisted it. We both played a part. Besides, you didn’t have to be there - it was my fault she attacked us, my fault you were there at all.”

He had to stop and come to terms with her words, while his eye flickered and hummed away as always, boring into the opposite wall. She sighed, waited patiently for his next excuse. This wasn’t a hole she was going to let him bury himself in. Not alone at least.

“...I-If you hadn’t been there- then. Then I think I might have died.”

Not the response she was expecting, but she could work with that.

“And if you hadn’t been there, I know I would have. So that makes us equally involved, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

She chuckled at his stubbornness. “It does.”

“Hmph.”

“Sans,” she let the sentence hang in the air until she was sure he was looking at her, “I have accepted the life on my conscience. We did this together, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” She paused again, let the words sink in. “I choose to fight for my life, and I’m not sorry for surviving. Are you?”

“...No.”

She had more she wanted to say. The events of today and the days before accumulated over her head, but she could see the toll that all the talking was taking on him. She took his hand. His eye rolled down to look at her, and he managed a halfhearted smile.

“Come on. Let’s go to sleep too?”

“Hmm.” He agreed.

She was scooped up smoothly into his arms again. It was quickly becoming one of her favourite places. Sans’ movements were lethargic as they checked the doors and windows together, and Kit noted the still-missing planks propped up in the upper hallway. She should probably fix those tomorrow, she thought.

Sans plopped her down, letting her make herself comfortable while he had some kind of staring contest with the door.

“What’s up, Sans?”

“It’ll be strange… having someone e-else here.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be a bit weird for me too.” She pulled herself back out of the blanket pile and padded up behind him, touching his hand. “It’ll be okay now. Come on.”

He ponderously followed, half dragged along in her grasp into the nest and left to work out his thoughts while she curled up nearby.

No matter the comfort of the blanket hoard, sleep didn’t come. Her thoughts rattled and chattered and she wriggled in the nest, bundling fabric around her and trying to find a position that would let her rest. Behind her, Sans lay still, but from the dim glow that shifted and flickered on the opposite wall it was clear that he hadn’t found sleep either.

Eventually, he spoke, voice rough and heavy with fatigue.

“You were going to run away today.”

She rolled around to face him, legs tangling in the covers. He was propped up slightly against the wall, staring across the room. One of his hands was stretched out between them, as if he had been reaching for her.

“How did you know that?”

“I could feel it - when I came home. Felt bad… like you weren’t here.”

“How?”

He frowned, confused. She tried again, more specific:

“I wasn’t even sure about running away myself. How could you feel it?”

His answer was to reach his hand out fully, beckoning her to him. When she complied, his palm came to press over her heart until she sensed the subtle pull on her soul.

“I can feel it, sometimes. Today, it- I couldn’t. Thought you were gone.”

With the pull came a feedback of emotion, causing her throat to tighten with guilt. He looked lost; his eye was on her, but staring vacantly through her as if she really had gone.

“I got scared.”

He raised his brow, pointed to himself in a question.

“No, it wasn’t your fault.” She tutted to herself for her earlier lapse of sanity. “I thought… It was stupid, but I thought that Papyrus might replace me.”

“But... He’s my brother. I don’t- He’s not… the same as you?”

He was having to really focus to keep up, his eye locked on now, adjusting constantly with her words. She tried to speak slowly.

“I know it was irrational. Even after I told you I would stay so many times, I nearly didn’t. I just… I realised how much you must care for him, more than I could ever compare to-”

“No, it’s not-”

“Wait,” she cut back across him, “I’m sorry, I know you have more to say too. Just let me explain first?”

He fell silent, frustration still apparent on his features.

“You care about him. More than anything. Enough that you managed to keep him a secret from someone who was living with you, and that’s the way it should be; I know I would have done anything for my siblings.”

She took a breath for him to catch up, but he seemed to be following if his expression of resignation was anything to go by.

“I had no frame of reference. I thought that Papyrus would be like the other monsters here - I was sure he would try to kill me, or chase me away because I’m human.”

“...He wouldn’t.”

“Well, I know that now, but even you tried to kill me, Sans. How was I meant to know any better? I had no idea.”

She hadn’t meant it as an accusation, but when he processed her words, his hand dropped from over her soul and retreated to rest in his lap. The lack of the subtle pull made her feel cold, disconnected.

“...I never told anyone about him. Never said h-he was still alive. Even when- when people thought, t-thought I killed him.”

“Really? You let them believe that?”

He nodded sadly. “All of them were a-afraid,” he waved towards the barricaded window, “it kept him safe.”

Kit let that thought float there for a moment. She remembered watching other residents of the town visibly cower from Sans’ presence. They thought he was crazed enough to murder his own brother, and he had just accepted their judgement, let it stay like that for Papyrus’ sake.

“Why change your mind now?” She realised that she was making it seem as though she didn’t want Papyrus here, so she tried again before he found his reply. “Surely it would have been safer to keep him hidden?”

“You’re here now.”

“Does that really make it any safer?”

“Yes. They know you’re here. We’re stronger together.” He seemed very confident in the statement, not a hint of a stutter. It filled her heart with pride that he thought so much of her - even in their very first encounter, he had never underestimated her. Never judged her to be weak.

He had a point, too. She had definitely seen people when she had travelled halfway across Snowdin forest and back earlier today. Even some of the ‘Canine Unit’ had been patrolling, but they had ignored her. Either the warning that she had sent with the eye-monster had spread well through the locals, or Sans’ reputation had expanded to include her.

She gave a wide smile that she hoped was reassuring. “If you’ll have me, I will gladly help you protect someone so important.”

“You-… Y-Y-...” He began, stopped, tried again, and gave up with a growl. His expression fell.

She felt a little guilty for making him talk so much at once, and hoped he’d remember the conversation tomorrow. He was getting a little better at talking, his vocalisations more confident, and his physical cues easier to interpret as she learned to understand what he explained with movements instead of words.

She sat quietly while he zoned out, sorting through whatever he was trying to say. A droplet of red had gathered below the light of his eye, and glimmered there, threatening to fall onto the blankets. She reached up and tentatively wiped away the excess magic with the ball of her palm. It fizzed and tingled pleasantly on her skin, and left it glowing for a moment. As it faded, it sent an echo of fear and uncertainty that wasn’t her own.

“Sans?”

No response. It looked like she had lost his attention for now.

Was it her that he was uncertain about? She knelt up to peer into his eye to try to glean some kind of solution, but jumped back when it suddenly shifted to focus back on her.

“Oh, hi. I thought I’d lost you for a second!”

“...I was here. Just. Thinking.”

“Me too.”

She sighed and pulled the blankets closer, wondering if he would mind her leaning against him to steal his warmth. She looked back up at him, and he was still watching her thoughtfully. She tipped her head in question:

“Hey, you know you can trust me, don’t you?”

“I know. I do…” He frowned, mulled the question over some more as his expression became pained. “S-Sorry I didn’t tell you… Didn’t mean to scare you away. I didn’t.”

“It’s alright. At the time I was only thinking it would be better if I left before you ever had to choose Papyrus over me.”

Sans’ fingers were quickly hooked into the hem of her shirt.

“I w-w… I wouldn’t. He doesn’t replace you.”

“I know. I know that. It’s okay. I’m not afraid any more.”

“Never wanted to scare you...”

He said no more, and she began to relax into his grip until he pulled her into his lap with a deep sigh. He was still tense, his ribcage occasionally lifting again her as he drew a breath, as if he might have something else to say, but it never came. His eye flickered like a standby light until Kit began to drift to sleep.

“Please don’t leave again?”

The pleading tone of his voice cut through her drowsiness and sent a pain through her heart, and when she looked up a large red tear dropped onto her cheek, making her jump. Tears had accumulated in both of his sockets.

“Sans? Hey, it’s okay.” She pushed herself upright against his chest to wipe the tears away with the nearest blanket, “I’m not going anywhere, alright?”

He didn’t answer. His arms came back around her and drew her up close to him, as close as he could, her head under his chin. He shook as he buried his face into her hair and held on. He didn’t let go once, even long after he fell asleep.

▵▾▵▾▵

It wasn’t all he wanted to say.

The words were still there somewhere, hiding in the parts of his mind he couldn’t reach. He couldn’t find the beginning of the conversation that would help him explain the pit in his soul, as though something was missing but painfully close to being found.

Even days later, he couldn’t do it. Sometimes he’d start to explain it and stumble again, leaving Kit to wait patiently for words that never came. It had made him quiet, and she was beginning to notice it in contrast to Papyrus’ effervescence.

Papyrus and Kit took a while to grow used to each other. She would jump at the sound of his voice, but she had only snapped at him about his volume a few times. It seemed to do her good to have someone else to talk to, and Papyrus navigated her fire with grace.

Kit had calmed a little anyway, clearly benefiting from being able to explore the forest and the caves freely. It felt safer now; the Snowdin residents kept a respectful distance. Sometimes, the trio would wander Sans’ patrol route together, Papyrus’ voice carrying between the trees while Kit and the brothers messed about in the snow.

Still he couldn’t find the words.

Instead, he went to Waterfall alone, and came back with an Echo flower, carefully replanted in a mostly-intact pot he found at the dump. He tried to tell the flower what he needed, but even then he couldn’t find the words. Instead, he told it ‘knock knock’ and left it on the table by the front door for Kit to find.

Within a few days, the flower’s message had been changed relentlessly by anyone who walked past it, devolving into secret notes, crude one-liners and occasionally when Papyrus found it, screeching complaints.

This morning, when Sans found it, it asked him in Kit’s voice ‘Hey Sans, could stew pick up some hawthorn berries today?’, shortly followed by a distant wail from Papyrus, cutting off abruptly as the flower’s message ended.

After a few seconds silent admiration, Sans burst out laughing. The noise drew Kit’s attention, and she appeared at the top of the stairs, wrapped in a blanket. Upon seeing him, a proud smile spread across her face.

“Well, can you?”

“S-sure,” he wiped the trail of red that had escaped down his cheek, “want to come with me?”

She nodded, then looked down at herself. “Give me a minute?”

Sans nodded and shuffled over to sit on the arm of the sofa, listening to her moving about upstairs. The walls creaked in the wind.

Kit returned with his jacket and her rucksack over her shoulders, padding to his side to peer up into his eye with a tilt of her head towards the door.

“Ready?”

They said little as they left the house and made their way out of Snowdin. A quiet foreboding hung in the air, as if the town was holding its collective breath, but the only person around was Doggo, watching them from his position leaning against a wall near the entrance to town. His dull eyes tracked Kit as they passed, and Sans let out a quiet rumble of warning, which made his human companion nudge him in the ribs.

“He’s just looking.”

“He can... f-furry well look somewhere else.” He uttered loud enough for the dog to hear.

Doggo didn’t seem hugely phased, baring his teeth in a smirk. A decidedly louder growl from Sans was enough to change his mind though, and he slunk away behind the building.

Sans didn’t speak until they were far from the village outskirts, him in the lead and Kit hopping through his footprints behind. The tension lingered even when they met Papyrus, meddling with a new ‘non-lethal’ trap on the road and talking away to himself as he worked. He beamed his crooked grin at them, placed a hand on Kit’s head as he wished them a good day, and returned to his work whilst attempting to whistle.

They agreed that Kit would accompany him to the start of his patrol route, so that she could pick berries while he worked his way back along the path. He asked her to be sure to stay on his left side where he could see her, which made him a little less tense. They got to the Ruins door without incident, Kit now slightly ahead as she wandered below the treeline, scuffing up the drifts.

The skeleton began the painstaking process of searching for disturbances. The loaded atmosphere made him feel as though a new human might come barging through the door at any moment, here to erase what was left of their existence, but Kit had assured him that there weren’t many humans left now, and that the entrance to the Ruins had indeed collapsed, making it very unlikely that anyone bigger than her could make it through.

But… Frisk had been small - even smaller than Kit - though when they came here things had been different. Kinder. Back then, there were puzzles rather than traps.

The sound of Kit crunching through the undergrowth behind him allowed him to let his guard down as time went on. There were no new footprints in the snow aside from their own, and the drifts were smooth around the ancient stone door. He disposed of a broken snare trap - empty - and began to trek steadily back towards town, red light scanning back and forth over the muddied snow a few meters either side of the path.

Kit came back to his side to offer him an apple, which he crushed gratefully in one bite. She pottered off again to the other side of the path.

“I’m just going to that tree over there, okay?”

“Sure... Watch your step.”

“I know!” She grinned back over her shoulder as she went.

They were nearly upon Sans’ sentry post, and he scouted around to the back to check it over. The blue of Kit’s jacket was visible through the front window, and he watched her fondly while she cut sprigs from the lower branches. His soul ached again, and again he wished he could find the words to explain the feeling. He rubbed his sternum absently, and returned to work.

Somewhere outside the border of Snowdin town, once they had passed Papyrus again and Kit was beginning to shiver, he made one last stop to check the foothold traps in the Canine Unit’s patrol area. There wouldn’t be any food there by now, and it wasn’t that he didn’t trust the dogs, but they weren’t always the most careful. It wouldn’t do for a small monster (or stars forbid, his human) to trip one by accident just because it wasn’t properly marked.

Halfway through his inspection, Kit called out for him. His magic flared, and he tore through the trees back to the path only to find that she was safe and sound - she had climbed into the lower branches of a fir tree and was using it as a lookout, and likely to let her feet warm up.

“Come and see this.” She sounded agitated.

From her vantage point, she had noticed a trail - broken branches and scratched trunks, leading back into the overgrown treeline. It didn’t look recent - the snow was undisturbed - but the damage was obvious if you were looking for it. His guard was up again instantly.

“Stay here.” He warned, ducking below a crooked branch to follow the trail. He heard her drop down from the tree regardless, but she didn’t follow.

It could have been made by a local, he thought, but there weren’t many Snowdin monsters that were big enough to cause this much destruction. The canopy overhead reduced the snow cover here, and it looked as though the damage was purposeful, violent.

Further down the slope the ground was rough, and beyond it lay the form of a fallen tree. On closer inspection, and from the scent of rotten wood, the tree hadn’t been uprooted by the damage. Underneath that scent though, something halted him in his tracks. Blood. No mistaking that smell.

It made him queasy, that acrid signature of death. He began to follow that trail, further back into the woods.

“Sans! Stop!”

He turned to see her peering down from the top of the bank, and tipped his head in question.

“I know what it is.”

▵▾▵▾▵

She stepped back onto the road to check the distance, and yes, from here she could see the side of the first Snowdin residence. From where she stood, she began to traverse the slope. Down the bank, where it was steep enough to force her to jog to keep her footing until she could use a large tree trunk to stop her momentum. Sans watched in bewilderment.

From the tree, she headed further down to a point where the snow was thin and muddy. Beneath it, roots had been cut and torn up from the ground in two places. She crouched, inspecting the damage, and Sans came to investigate.

“...What is it?”

“Do you recognise this?” She indicated the torn up ground, but he shook his head.

To jog his memory, she turned to him, then fell back to the ground, facing the sky with her arms braced wide against the floor.

“What…? Are you doing?”

“You don’t remember?”

He huffed, exasperated, but she just grinned and reached for his hand before he could get bored with her antics. He followed her lead, his confusion turning into surprise as she pulled him down to kneel with her.

“Kit, w-what are you-?”

“Try to remember,” she shuffled back, pulled his hands over until they found the rough ground on either side, his face now inches from hers, “it was right here, I’m sure it was.”

“I don’t-... remember.”

She could feel his voice reverberating in her chest, and yes, this was definitely the place she had first met him. She could see where his fingers had punctured the ground either side of her head, and he seemed to slowly realise as well, as his talons slipped back into the grooves that they had made.

Realisation dawned and his pupil dilated, the red brightening, sharpening at the edges.

“There. You know where we are now?”

He rumbled softly, his head dipping low towards her neck as if mimicking that first encounter, his breath hot on her skin. She knew he was remembering it as vividly as she was. His teeth grazed her collarbone and she giggled, twining her arms around his neck. Tracing back the memory, she reached up to where she had hit him, running lightly along the surface of his skull. He tensed, causing her to withdraw, but she could quickly see that he wasn’t in the present now; he stared through her, eye blurred and warped at the edge.

The tension condensed, her heart rate increasing with it. Sans had gone rigid. This hadn’t happened out in the open before: usually when he was outside of the house he was wilder, quicker to react, and he had his wits about him. If he fell into his absent state here, they could be in danger.

Perhaps he had become trapped in that memory, back in the snowstorm and raging through the woods to capture his prey. Kit sat up, having to push him back onto his haunches with a grunt of effort to escape from underneath him. He didn’t respond. She readied herself to get out of his way quickly should he wake in that predatory mindset.

“Sans?”

She couldn’t let him stay like this - she couldn’t protect both of them-...

“...I’m sorry.” He mumbled.

Her heart leapt. “Oh, thank fuck. I thought-... What do you mean?”

“If- If I’d known,” his eye shivered, “if I’d known what would happen to you? I w-wouldn’t have-... If I’d known you.”

“You had no way to be sure I wasn’t dangerous. I understand that, and there’s no way you could have known about the trap either.”

He shook himself loose from the daze and abruptly stood up, startling her with the uncharacteristic energy and the powerful, almost aggressive gleam in his eye.

“Where was it?” There was venom in his question.

“Uh, it was over there.” Kit pointed down the slope, keeping out of his way as he made a beeline for the form of the fallen tree, snapping the trunks of smaller trees in his path.

“Whoa, wait. Sans, be careful.” No answer. “You’re going to step on it if you don’t slow down!”

The trap wasn’t big enough to hurt him much, but she knew first-hand how easily monsters could be injured. She stumbled to get ahead of him, having to vault over roots and uneven ground to match his pace. He still got there first, and turned on her with that vicious fire still present.

“Where?”

“Just hold on, please.” Kit scrambled to the fallen trunk. “Do you want me to end up trapped again?”

That managed to get through to him, forcing him to wait patiently for her to crouch over the log, her heart in her mouth as she pawed through the drift with a stick. Wood hit metal with a dull thump.

“Got it.” She whispered, half holding her breath.

Sans was quick to scoop aside the fresh snow and uncover the trap, which was stained black between the jaws but thankfully still closed, as she had left it. A phantom pain shot through her leg as the skeleton pulled the trap up. It was chained to the ground underneath the log, giving an idea of how long it might have been forgotten here.

With a clash the chain was severed by a bone the size of Kit’s leg, making her yelp. Sans gave her an apologetic look and lifted the trap up to inspect it. His eye flared, light flickering to life in the right socket too as he glared at the mechanism as though it had tried to ruin his life too. He gripped it in both hands, teeth bared, and with a growl the trap was bent back upon itself until the metal groaned, failed, and collapsed under the pressure.

“Better.” He nodded to himself, and dropped the shattered pieces of the trap back into the snow.

“Thank you, Sans. Now it can’t hurt anyone else at least.”

She didn’t get an answer, and Sans simply stared at the remains of the trap for some time before speaking up.

“I shouldn’t have chased you... I’m sorry.” His hands reached out to lift her from the log.

“I know,” Kit reassured, “I forgive you.”

He bundled her safely in his arms, and she was relieved that she wouldn’t have to walk back up the slope on her wobbly legs. He seemed out-of-sorts still, holding on a little too tight to be comfortable.

“You know, I’m sorry too.” She smiled, trying to lift his spirits.

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t have hit you with a stick, even if you were being a bonehead.” She rapped the side of her head with her knuckles.

That managed to draw a chuckle from him, but he still looked drained. The walk back to Snowdin stayed quiet, and Kit didn't ask to get down from his arms. She didn't really want to be put down any more.

When they returned, Papyrus was still out and about. Kit stashed her supplies from today’s scavenging, and set a fresh fire in the hearth. Sans lingered. She could feel his eye on her back, so she reached out a hand, and his was immediately in hers, grasping as though she were a lifeline. Warm, as usual. It made setting the logs a little harder, but she didn’t mind.

“Could you light the fire?”

He clicked his fingers, and sparks ignited in the grate as they did simultaneously in his eye. As she watched the tendrils of light curling through the gap in his skull, her eye met his, and she felt that connection again in a current so intense that it almost hurt.

“Is everything alright, Sans?”

His focus had dropped to their clasped hands, and he rubbed his sternum deliberately. His answer didn’t come, but she could see he was trying, so she stoked the fire and waited. Occasionally, he would look up at her, perhaps to check if she was still waiting, or perhaps just to look.

▵▾▵▾▵

Uncertainly, he finally found his words.

“Will you stay here?”

Kit turned from tending the fire. “I already told you I would, if that’s okay?”

“...You don’t want to go home?”

She shrugged. “Do you want me to stay here?”

Something didn’t sit right with that question. His eye sparked again and derailed his thought process, buzzing painfully as he tried to maintain control.

“...There was someone else. They said they would f-free us…”

“Free you? From the Underground?”

He frowned by way of answer, held her tiny hand tighter.

“Do you want to leave then? We could try to find a way out.”

He didn’t like the thought. He knew she meant that they would go together, but still the thought of her trying to break the barrier scared him. Travelling all that way, past whatever dangerous monsters had come to rule the areas beyond Snowdin now that Undyne and Asgore were gone.

“No. Don’t want leave,” he looked up into her eyes, “do you?”

“Nah. I don’t have a home to go back to anyway.”

She looked so sure, said it so lightly, as if it truly didn’t matter to her that she was trapped down here with him. She used their entwined hands to pull herself close to him, and he used her presence as an anchor; to find his words.

“...I want you to stay. More than- more t-than-...” He exhaled deliberately. “This is your home.”

She looked up at him with fondness that told him more than anything she could have said.

“Well, I’d love to stay. You really mean it?”

He reached to pull her into his lap and again the closeness remedied the ache in his soul.

“Yes. It’s yours...”

He felt her relax, her tiny body fitting perfectly against him. He was aware of every movement, every point of contact. He got lost in listening to her breathing and the hum of her soul beneath, harmonising with his own. When he looked down she was gazing up at him with that expression that told him she’d said something. Did he miss it?

“...Hmm?”

“Uh,” she laughed awkwardly, “it doesn’t matter.”

“No. It does… I didn’t hear you.”

She shifted away from his gaze and her fingers twined with his, fiddling with the joints and nicks in the bone. She took a steadying breath.

“I said, if- if you want me to, then I’ll stay as long as I live.”

The words sunk in, failed to translate, and lodged somewhere in his skull, overwhelming him. His pupil bloomed, overflowed.

“Then…” he whispered, afraid to shatter the moment, “then I want you to live forever.”

“Forever with you, huh?” Kit laughed, softly, tears in her eyes with the intensity of her smile. “I like that idea, Sans.”

Sans held her close. Held her close and warm and safe. He and Papyrus accepted the new member of their family as if she was meant to be there - quiet words and thoughtful actions softening sharp edges and calloused souls.

Days passed easily.

Weeks.

Perhaps months.

He kept her safe. He always would.