Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are some days where you really regret having bought a house on the edge of town.

It’s nice to have peace and quiet after long, stressful days of work, of course. But the long drive from downtown to the woods at the base of the mountain each night is still draining in its own way, and sometimes you wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to get a place closer to the nail salon where you work. Grocery shopping is also always a tricky prospect -- anything frozen that isn’t in a special bag will start getting soggy and going bad on the long drive home.

You also can’t say you really enjoy the long stretch of driving through the fringes of woodland, no matter how cheap the house you found out there is. Especially when there’ve been tremors for most of the day at this point, making the back country roads that much more hazardous and prone to  rock- and mudslides.

And of course, there’s always the days where your keys just won’t fucking work for whatever reason.

You rest your head against the splintering, chipped paint of your front door, groaning in annoyance while you jiggle your key in the lock. It’s stuck -- again. The shadows are starting to get longer and your shoulders ache and you still haven’t eaten dinner and you really don’t have time for this.

Giving up, you manage to pry your key out again and resolve to strip your pride enough to just… poke your head through the dog door. You can’t fit through the damn thing, but you might be able to reach the lock and unlock the back door through it.

You leave your sad little grocery bags on the front porch, trooping through the messy underbrush on the side of your house and nearly tripping over small divots and holes in the dirt.

The back porch wood is warped, and you always feel a little like you’re stepping on unsteady ground whenever you step up onto it. It creaks under your weight in a way that has never been flattering, too. You grimace and ease down onto your knees, letting out a small whine as splinters start tearing your stockings to shreds. Of all the days for the lock to jam… it had to be the one where you actually wore a skirt, didn’t it?

You don’t even know why you’ve kept this dumb dog door. You don’t even have a dog. You usually leave it closed from the inside, and prying it up enough until you can get your fingers under it to push the cover up and off is more dexterity than you really needed after a long day at work.

It clatters loudly to the floor inside once you’ve pushed it off. You wince -- sounds out here have always seemed louder than they should be. Maybe because there were so few of them, usually.

With one more small whine to yourself, you breathe out and duck down until you can push your head through. If there’s one good thing about living this far out of town, it’s that you at least don’t have to worry about anyone seeing you making a fool of yourself like this. It’s really uncomfortable trying to twist your head and at least one arm and shoulder through the small squarish door.

You swing your hand upward, straining for a few seconds. Your fingertips brush against the doorknob, and you grunt in exertion to stretch just an inch or so more, until you can hook the tip of one finger against the turn of the lock. A jolt of pain shoots through your shoulder as you pull the muscle, but the lock turns, and you go lax with a small whimper for a moment, wincing in pain.

It’s almost even more of an ordeal to pull yourself out again. Your hair is staticy and flying in every direction by the time you manage to gingerly sit up again. Your stockings are pretty much already tattered to shreds from the splinters. And god, your shoulders hurt even more now.

You let out a weary breath, reaching up and turning the knob on the door. It swings open anticlimactically.

You give a tiny, exhausted cheer for yourself and stagger to your feet again, going inside. You hurry to your front door, unlocking that too, and gather your groceries before any wildlife gets any funny ideas.

Once the doors are properly locked again, you actually feel quite a lot of the tension bleed out of your system. Despite some of your reservations about living so far out of town, and the less-than-stellar conditions of the outer portions of the house, you do have to admit you’ve managed to make the inside quite homey. It had taken some hard work, sure, and a lot of cleaning effort and more than a little renovating -- you’d been painting for a week, and some of the electrical had needed to be redone -- but it had all paid off.

There’s another brief tremor underfoot that unsteadies you and makes the walls creak. You lean against a wall to keep yourself from falling over, waiting it out. It probably says something about how often this has happened today that you barely even pay attention to it anymore. It’s over before a moment has passed -- though they’ve been getting more frequent over the last hour or so, they don’t last long.

Turning on the lamps in the front hallway fills the space with a warm yellow light, one that casts the woodwork on the walls into cozy relief. You sit on the small bench near the door and pull off your shoes, tugging off your tattered stockings and balling them up to throw out later. With that done, you take a moment to rub some of the ache out of your feet, pushing your glasses back up on your nose when they start to droop down.

As little as you want to think about it, dinner won’t cook itself.

...Ehh… maybe you’ll order takeout. It’ll take a while to get here, order-ins almost always seem to have trouble finding the turn-off for your little cabin in the woods, but at least you won’t have to cook. You can get changed into sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt and veg out in front of the television for a bit.

You tuck your shoes into the slot underneath the bench, and pad barefooted further into your home, taking the groceries with you. Putting them away only takes a few minutes, and once that’s done, you scroll through the apps on your phone to decide what to order. Hmmm… Chinese sounds good.

You multitask while you put the order in, heading upstairs to the master bedroom to get stripped and comfy, and tossing your mutilated stockings into the trash bin under your desk. Your laptop is plugged in next to your textbooks, beeping occasionally to alert you to a new email assignment for your online classes -- you’ll have to hop on that tomorrow, if you fall behind you’ll never catch up…

Your thoughts are scattered but pleasantly relaxed by the time you’ve meandered back downstairs and collapsed on the couch in the living room. Difficult days, at least, always end in this sort of pleasant assurance that the hard part is over. You can decompress. You scoop up the television remote, fully intending to dissociate into whatever semi-decent soap opera you can find.

Scrrrrritch--scritch. Scritch-scrrritch, scritch.

Bark!

You pause, the television still off. That… that was the sounds of something scratching at the dog door cover on the back door, and an unmistakable bark. A part of you briefly worries -- you’re pretty sure there aren’t coyotes out here, and that bark didn’t sound like it came from a big dog, but still…

You put the remote down again. The only way to figure it out would be to go check.

The window screen on the back door looks out into the little clearing before the woods reassert themselves that you’ve jokingly been referring to as your backyard. It’s already shadowed, despite the sun still being up, since the slopes of Mt. Ebott cut off most of the sunlight in the late afternoons. The scratching comes again, almost inquisitive, and another soft bark -- you peer through the screen netting and catch sight of a stringy fur ball sitting patiently on your back porch.

A samoyed, by the look of it. But a tiny one. It can’t be more than a foot and a half or so tall.

It’s also filthy . Its fur is matted and almost black where it should be white.

It barks again, looking up at you through the screen and wagging its tail, panting slightly. You hesitantly pull up the cover on the dog door again, and it hops to its feet and trots through the provided opening without hesitation.

You kneel down, offering your knuckles for it to sniff before gently feeling around the slightly matted fur on its neck. As you had hoped, there’s the frayed edges of a leather collar tucked and tangled in among the fur. It takes a bit of gentle untangling before you manage to find the letters indented into the leather.

T-O-B-Y. Nothing else. No address. No phone number.

“Toby, huh…?” you murmur. The dog yips again, wagging its -- his -- tail, looking up at you almost expectantly. “Did your previous owner live out here? Looks like they left you out in the woods. You're a mess.” You scratch lightly behind his ears, and he leans into the touch with another pleased bark.

“You could really use a bath,” you joke, taking your hand back and offering your arms to the little pup, who wags his tail again before hopping right into them and letting you pick him up. Immediately, your shirt is covered in mud, dark clay that has a seemingly bluish tint, and a sludge like algae. You shudder at the feeling and really hope this stuff comes off. “Come on, then, let’s get you cleaned up and I’ll see about getting you some food.”

He wiggles a bit in your arms when you stand, squirming and struggling for a few seconds, but stills readily enough once you're up and trotting upstairs again. Whoever his owner was previously, they at least had him socialized nicely, considering how calmly he’s letting you manhandle him.

You shoulder open the upstairs bathroom door and let out a soft “oof!” when he hops out of your hands with another small yip, landing on the newly re-tiled floor and scattering mud chips as he goes.

From the sound of his claws scraping as he goes, it’ll be time for a trim of those soon, too.

You shut the door behind yourself with your freshly freed (if muddied) hands, to keep the little bugger from escaping before you have him dried and less likely to leave smears of dirt wherever he goes. You are content, however, to let him sniff about the new room while you fiddle with the knobs on your old clawfoot tub -- the water is a smidge slow, considering it rained recently, having washed new clumps of mud into the filter for the well.

You let your hands hover under the water for a moment while the pipes heat, waiting for a nice temperature before you put the pup in. The scuffling noise of the claws against the tiles and the whuffling of the little nose in the wire trash bin manages to pull a small, amused smile to your lips.

“There we go,” you murmur to yourself as the water reaches a decent heat, and click your tongue gently toward the dog, who perks up and trots back over to you. He lets you scoop him up again into the tub, and you start scrubbing loose the dirt chunks under the outer layer of white fur. The water quickly turns brown, and large chunks of mud and clay start to sheer off under your fingernails.

You spend a few minutes with just the water and your hands, trying to loosen as much as you can before you have to scrub again with soap. Toby stands still, letting you lift his paws one at a time and start prying dried algae from between his claws, and sitting when you push down on his butt to get at the fur around his head better. It’s a grimy, messy process, and no matter how carefully you’re working, it isn’t long before your shirt is not only filthy, but also soaked through.

You manage to unearth the clasp for his collar once the fur around his neck has gone back to a modest, pale wet-gray instead of a bluish black. He lifts a leg to scratch at his neck once you’ve undone it and set the collar aside.

“You’re very well behaved,” you comment idly, “Or maybe you just realize that the quickest way to getting clean and snuggly again is to put up with me. We’ll see when it comes time to dry you off.”

You squeeze a generous dollop of shampoo into your hands and set to work again, scrubbing him down a second time, more thoroughly than the first. You keep going, rinsing him off and applying more shampoo until the water finally runs clear and a dripping, panting white blob is standing in your tub, looking up at you with unabashed glee on his face. You guess he’s happy to be clean. Either that or he’s relishing in what you know is coming next.

You shut off the water and brace yourself for a shower.

And, as expected, Toby shakes himself off vigorously, and douses you from head to toe, scattering puddles throughout your bathroom before he even considers letting you lift him out of the tub. You’re glad that a majority of the water was caught by the stained old porcelain; you don’t want to imagine what a mess you would’ve been facing if he’d shaken once he was out.

Once he stills, you straighten up again and give him a stern look. “Little beast.” You accuse without heat.

He yips, unapologetic.

“Stay there while I get the towels.” You say anyway, and he obligingly sits down in the tub, still dripping. You’re as quick as you can possibly be, ducking out of the bathroom to grab a few towels out of the linen closet next to the stairs. You also snag a new shirt from your room and quickly change from the gooey mess to the clean, fresh white cotton. It’s still a breath of relief once you’ve come back to the bathroom to find him still patiently waiting for you, and have got a towel set on the floor and have scooped him out to thoroughly rub him dry.

“Fluff butt. Stinky bastard man.” You tease while you dry him off. “Malicious little devil.”

He yips proudly after every appellation, wagging his tail, which has already started to fluff up again.

“Are you going to let me blow-dry you, or have I served my purpose?” You reach over to the cabinet beneath the sink, tugging out your portable hair dryer and plugging it in. He wags his tail again, still looking up at you, so you turn the dryer to a low heat and start gently combing your fingers through his fur as you dry it, trying to avoid letting it snag into knots. He wiggles gleefully under the warm air, turning in rapid circles until you just point the dryer and let him direct where it goes.

The end result is a rather satisfyingly fluffy white dog hopping up and balancing against your legs while you blow warm air into his face, making his ears comically flap backwards. You’re smiling and can’t help it while you’re watching his antics.

“Annoying dog.” You belatedly add, in a far more fond tone than you really intended. He bounces and lolls his tongue out and barks loudly in clear excitement. “Oh, you like that? You like it when I call you an annoying dog?” You lean down to scratch vigorously behind his ears, shutting off the hair dryer, and he whines in clear spoiled pleasure.

You laugh a little and grab his collar again, putting it back on around his neck and starting to clean up the bathroom. You figure you’ll start looking for whoever his owner is tomorrow morning, since you have the day off. As cute a dog as he is, you're just not equipped at this point in your life to take care of a pet long-term in a way that one deserves.

Another tremor starts up under your feet-- but this one is strong. You stagger as the slightly unsteady sway of the upper floor tests your admittedly non-existent sea legs, and let out a pained yelp of surprise; your foot had landed in one of the puddles scattering the bathroom floor now, and you only realized it when your tailbone started screaming at you and you noticed that hey, you were on the floor now. Ow .

But that has to take a backseat to your current worries. Your toiletries are shaking off of the countertop, clattering around you, and one of the pictures you put up falls off the wall of the bathroom, frame shattering on impact with the floor, because the tremor isn’t stopping.

Toby hops into your lap at the clatter and the sudden burst of broken glass, and you instinctively curl around him protectively, your heart hammering in your chest. One minute drags into two, drags into three, four, and by the time the ground has been shaking underneath you for five minutes straight you’re beginning to worry that your house is going to either collapse or get buried in a mudslide from up the mountain. The lights are starting to flash on and off while you curl around the fluffy white dog in your lap.

And almost as suddenly as it began, it’s over.

You open your eyes, realizing belatedly that you’d been curling a little bit tighter by the second around the warm white dog in your lap, and immediately loosen your hold. He sits on your legs and peers up at you for a moment while you get yourself back under control, seeming to consider you for a moment in a way that’s more… sapient than you’d normally expect from a dog.

“Is it over?” you ask, not sure if you’re asking the dog or the air around you in general. He tilts his head up at you, before licking your nose once and hopping off of your lap again, nails clicking against the tile and trotting over toward the door to scratch at it.

You glance one more time around your bathroom at the scattered mess, and are morbidly dreading the state of the rest of your house. But you suppose you need to know how bad things are to be able to fix them. So you stagger to your feet again and walk a bit bow-legged toward the door, opening it up and following Toby on a quick survey of the house.

Your bedroom, at least, seems moderately undamaged. Your college textbooks got knocked off of your desk, and your laptop is teetering dangerously close to the edge, but other than that only a few plastic knicknacks are scattered on the floor. The upstairs guest room is likewise intact, though it has far less of value to get knocked around, and the small little guest bathroom on the second floor had some of the jars for toiletries knocked into the sink, and a hand towel in the toilet, which you fish out.

Downstairs is less lucky. The bookshelf in the living area has toppled over, and there’s books, broken knick knacks, and a shattered candle on the floor. You inch around the carnage to go grab your shoes before you continue, making sure to scoop Toby up before he can step on the glass. You carry him into the kitchen, noting that your rack of pots and pans has only lost two of its number to the floor, a few drawers are ajar, and another vase has toppled.

Unfortunate, but not debilitating, you decide. You’ll probably be cleaning for at least another hour or so tonight, which puts a severe damper on your ‘decompress and vegetate’ plans, but at least you don’t have any burst pipes, and the electric seems to have held up. You put Toby down and grab the dustpan, pausing only long enough to turn the TV on and flip to the news as you methodically start cleaning up glass.

“… sudden tremors throughout the course of the day still have local seismologists baffled, and the most recent one has caused some scattered property damage; civilians are advised to keep a clear perimeter away from any downed power lines…”

You toss the broken glass into the kitchen trash bin, and move back into the living room to heave the toppled bookcase upright again. Toby seems to have taken a spot on the couch, watching you again, but you pay him no mind while you start shelving books again. You’ve only got about half an ear open for the news, just in case some sort of info comes up about the tremors, when Toby gives a loud bark to grab your attention again.

“-- visuals on Mt. Ebott, a large chunk near the summit seems to have shaken loose and slid down the south side of the mountain.”

You scoot over on the floor until you can get a sightline on the TV again, looking at the helicopter footage being shown of a pretty big rockslide. Luckily for you, it’s a little bit away from town, and not really near your house. You let out a low whistle, squinting a bit -- it almost looks like the mountain is glowing , like the cloudy mist that always seems to hover around it is a solid mass, whirling in its own self-contained wind.

The footage follows the helicopter’s path as the smoke and mist dissipates, and you blink again, firmly telling yourself that you were just imagining the glow. You’re about to turn back to what you’re doing when your eye spots movement in the footage, and you snap your gaze back to it in the same moment as the newscaster in the helicopter expresses his own notice of it.

“That appears to-- it appears that there was someone on the mountain at the time of the tremor! They’re climbing out of the hole-- They look like a child, I repeat, there is a child at the top of Mt. Ebott, and they’re…”

Toby barks one more time, insistently, and jolts from the couch and through the kitchen again, leaping over the mess of books in your living room. You barely have time to cry out after him before you hear the clatter of the dog door again and know he’s gone. Without any good way to go find him, you return your attention to the newscast, where the child on the mountain has turned back into the hole and is reaching down--

There’s someone else there, you realize, the kid’s helping them out.

And sure enough, the child pulls a hand up with them, but it isn’t a human hand. You’re sure you’re not the only one in town who lets out a faint, astonished yell at the sight of the massive, horned entity that climbs ponderously out of the hole again, draped in purple cloaks and covered in white fur, which shadows its eyes from the setting sun and reaches down to help the next one out.

One by one, they come. Furred, scaled, horned, some of them aflame, several of them with smaller entities huddled close to them, even a few skeletons if your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. It’s like Halloween decided to come early. The helicopter keeps a consistent distance to maintain footage while the only human child in the mass of-- of-- monsters wanders amongst them, accepting grateful hugs from some and bumping heads with the smaller ones. The monsters around them are huddling close, hesitantly, most of them staring at the sunset like they’ve never seen one before.

When they see the helicopter, the child waves, and the footage manages to capture their exhausted, beatific, absolutely joyful smile, as they lean against one of the first monsters that had come out with them.

And several miles down the mountainside, you sit on your living room floor, starting to realize that life has just changed forever.

Chapter Text

The next few weeks pass in a blur.

Between the newscasters debating the merit of the sudden influx of monster-kind; coverage of the negotiations between the monster king, Asgore, his appointed ‘monster ambassador’ in the child that came out with them (who you learn over time is named ‘Frisk’), and the city’s governing officials; the burst of social media coverage bringing national government notice to the previously ‘backwoods’ cityscape; and even just seeing them going about their lives and watching people around them staring and whispering at each other; it honestly seems like you can’t go ten minutes without someone else talking about the newest residents of Ebott. You try not to involve yourself with too much of the monster-focused obsession, skimping out on the news and focusing on your classes and work as best as you can. It doesn’t help that the salon you work at is filled with older ladies who don’t realize that you’ve been teaching yourself Vietnamese via Duolingo, and that you’re starting to understand scattered bits and pieces of their gossiping now when they start chattering at each other.

(You may or may not have regretted that decision. It had hurt when you finally realized that one of the phrases you’d heard them saying several times to each other when they were  around you roughly translated to ‘beached whale’. But there was a spiteful part of you that had pushed you onward with the lessons for the simple reason you had started them in the first place, because you were definitely not harboring a revenge fantasy of answering them in their own language one of these days and getting to watch the realization, horror, and regret on their faces. Definitely not. That would be petty.)

Still, you suppose that they’re at least subtle enough deciding to use Vietnamese when they decide to start badmouthing the first few monsters that come in for claw filing, buffing, and polishing, even if they’re entirely unsubtle in letting you fumble your way through it and refusing to do so themselves.

You’re in the middle of sharpening one said claw on the fuzzy, padded fingers of a bear monster child, while the child’s mother sits in the other chair at your station with a fond smile. The little bear girl is wheedling her mother to get her claws painted a vibrant, electric blue, and you can overhear a couple of your co-workers carrying on a detrimental conversation -- you’re only catching maybe one word in five, but you’re definitely catching enough to feel a twisted sort of disgust in your stomach for their blackened souls.

This is maybe the fourth such monster who you’ve assisted, and you’re pretty sure it hasn’t escaped their notice that you’re the designated “monster manicurist”. The little bear girl had bounced over to you practically before her mother had finished signing in, where you had been finishing up with another customer, standing a bit out of the way and watching with open curiosity while you added french tips to the previous customer’s nails. You’d spared her a small smile, at the time, pointedly ignoring the furrow in your customer’s brows, and counted it lucky that her mother had called her back before a confrontation could break out.

Now, though, you’re allowed to interact with her more directly, and you’re enjoying every moment of her gentle pleading while you methodically file around the tip of the claw in your fingers. “You know,” you interject when she takes a breath, making both her and her mother turn toward you again, “I can do little pictures in nail polish, too.”

The little girl’s eyes light up in obvious delight, and her mother gives a faux-exasperated sigh, her smile growing more fond. “Like what? Like what?” the little girl demands, bouncing a bit in her seat but notably keeping her hand still in yours while you continue filing the claw to a respectable, if faintly blunted point.

“Well,” you hum, looking down at the little black points against the pads of your fingers. “The shape of your claws makes some designs less feasible, like fireworks or more flat, round designs, but I could… hm.” you tap your fingers against your chin in exaggerated thought, considering the cone-like protrusions. “I might be able to make them little ice cream cones, or party hats, or…”

“Party hats!” the bear girl interrupts, looking at her mom with wide eyes again, “Mom, pleaseeeee? Little electric blue party hats with polka dots! And sparkles!”

“Well…” the mother sighs in fond relent, bringing a large paw up to rub at the scruff around her neck, “I suppose it’s not too much more expensive…”

You finish off with the nail file and gesture for her mother to examine the final points of her newly sharpened claws, like you’ve been doing with the last few Monsters who came in to get their ‘nails’ done. You’ve admitted openly that you’re open to criticism, and want to be able to do it right even though it’s not a normal part of your wheelhouse. And it certainly seems to have been garnering their approval.

You hear another short exchange in rapid Vietnamese between two of your older coworkers, conversationally derogatory over their own work, and they exchange a laugh. Your hand flexes instinctively and you have to bite down the bilious, indignant rage. You can pick out the phrase that has basically been a shorthand for them referring to the monsters, and a word that sounds uncomfortably close to what you think is a slur.

“Little blue party hats it is.” You say, perhaps a bit more forcefully cheerful than necessary, “Go grab the colors you want from the wall, then.”

The little bear girl gives a rumbling giggle and bounces off of the chair across the salon up to the wall of nail polishes, taking a spot next to a customer who's just come in and who is also scanning the colors. You share a quick glance with her mother, who gives an oddly tight smile your way. You realize belatedly that your hand is still clenched in a tense fist from your coworkers’ comments. You force it to unclench.

“Is everything alright?” the bear mother asks, softly enough that it’s almost lost in the cacophony of the shop around you. You notice she’s splitting her attention almost instinctively between noting your tension and keeping an eye on her daughter, who’s carefully plucking three small bottles of nail polish off of the shelf -- the electric blue she’s been wheedling for and two bright and clashing secondary colors, a gaudy red and a radioactive green, presumably for the polka dots.

“Nothing to bother.” you dismiss, gently but firmly. “Some work-related unpleasantness, is all.”

You’re not going to be the one to tell this poor woman that she and her daughter are being viciously insulted, after all. They don’t need to have their days ruined like that.

The little girl bounds back over to your station, setting the nail polish bottles down with a care and delicacy that you appreciate, mostly because younger kids have had an unfortunate habit to crack nail polish bottles at your station and that comes out of your paycheck whenever it happens. You shake the electric blue bottle while she climbs back up into the chair and holds her hands out to you again, eyes glimmering with delight.

“You’re a good soul, you know.” the mother muses quietly, while you carefully paint blue triangles on each of the little black claws. “I’d heard there was someone here worth knowing, from a few of the others. The first few-- you call them nail tics?”

“Nail techs.” you automatically correct, your focus still on carefully making sure the lines of the edges of the hats are straight. “It’s short for technicians.”

“--ah. Then, the first few nail techs I saw here… I was a little worried we were in the wrong salon.” You see her cast a quick glance around at the other techs, who are carrying on with a quick chatter between themselves, and see her furry brows furrow in a distaste that matches your own. “I almost turned around with Miri and left, which I’m sure was the intended result.”

Miri , you mentally repeat, starting to add a few little frills of tassel to the ends of the party hats on the claws in the shiny, glimmering green. It’s not necessary for you to know the names of your customers, but something has made you take note of those names that you could learn of the Monsters. If you're going to be the designated "monster manicurist" then you're probably going to get repeat customers fairly often in the monster ranks.

“And what changed your mind?” you ask, just as softly.

“You came out of the back,” the mother smiles, and her eyes go a warm honey brown color that makes you feel a small burst of pride for something you don’t even know about yet. “And it was obvious that you were who the others were talking about.”

Obvious? You tilt your head toward her, pausing long enough to consider her expression until Miri gives a small growly whine and you turn your eyes back down to her half-finished claws, adding the bright candy red polka dots. “How so?” you ask, unwillingly intrigued. You had noticed that the last couple of monsters had seemed to turn to you automatically...

“Oh, but, how could it not be?” her mother gives a small half-laugh, and you see a couple of the other nail techs sneak glances up at you. You send a brief but pointed stink eye back toward them until they look away again, and almost miss the continuation of her thought; “Such a lovely shade of purple, after all!”

You blink again, almost immediately glancing down at your own chipped nail polish -- you’d picked the orchid shade the last time you did them, but you don’t understand how she could have seen your nails from across the salon, or why that would make a difference--

“Oh--” she brings a paw to her muzzle, trying to hide the smile, “I didn’t mean your nails, dear, though they are a wonderful shade. I meant the light of your Soul. Compared to the rest…” she drops her voice again, almost conspiratorial, “Well. A polished gemstone among river stones, to put it bluntly. I knew it had to be you the others had talked about. Why, I think I’ve only seen one soul with that particular sort of healthy, pure glow before.”

You stare at her for a few seconds while gently pushing Miri’s paws into the UV lamp to dry them. “I… don’t follow.”

“No one’s complimented you for it yet?” her mother looks surprised, “Oh, my. Well… I don’t suppose you’d have time to spare? It might take a bit of time for me to explain it. If you'd like.”

“Mama, look!” Miri displays her dried nails, proudly, looking like Christmas just came early.

You bite down a lump in your throat before turning in your seat to call out to the highest ranking of your co-workers. “Mai, ơi.”

“ Vâng? ” she calls back, glancing up at you. Even if you hadn’t been learning some, you would have gathered by her tone that that meant ‘yes?’ The fact that you’re using her home tongue barely phases her -- you’re sure she probably thinks you’ve picked up the getting-attention phrase from one of the others.

“I’m taking my lunch.”

“Mnh,” she makes a general sound of dismissive acknowledgement, waving you along. “Clean your station before you go.”

“Obviously,” You breathe to yourself as you stand, going to ring Miri and her mother out. You smile gently down at Miri, who is still clicking her newly sharpened and painted claws against the marble counter with obvious delight, before slipping back into your professional scripts. “That’ll be 16 dollars. Monster gold conversion is 4G.”

“So let me get this straight,” you start, twirling a breadstick chunk through a smear of freccetta cheese with your chin in your free hand as you look across the table at Miri and her mother, Loruka -- though she’d insisted you call her Ruka.  “You, monsters, can see souls?”

“Less a physical sight,” Ruka shrugs, tearing off a bit of grilled chicken from her fork. Despite having just met her, you have to admit you’re charmed, and the fact that she’s more or less treating you to lunch at a nice, newly opened Italian place is certainly helping. “More just, a sense for these sort of things.  With most of us, we can only get fleeting glimpses -- it’s easier the stronger the soul in question is, of course, but without active effort on our parts, human Souls remain safe and invisible. We see it more clearly when our eyes are closed, in fact, rather like an overlay of light.”

“Mama’s an excellent judge of character, though.” Miri asserts over her spaghetti, “The King was considering her for the Castle Guard position for a time.”

“Now, we’ve talked about this,” Ruka rolls her eyes, “He made a choice based on capability, and I don’t begrudge Sans for being a better choice. He was far more personable than I was at the time, and knew more people.”

“Right. Nothing to do with him being a Boss Monster and you not being one!” Miri rolls her eyes.

“ Miri. ” Ruka warns, before turning back toward you, “It’s been admittedly rather disheartening, with many of the humans we’ve been meeting. It seems as though the most influential ones, the ones with the most power to help--”

“--choose only to help themselves?” you interject, with a dry sort of bitterness behind the words. “Mmn. Hadn’t noticed.”

“Their souls are dull .” Ruka sighs, scooping another bit of chicken off of her plate and popping it into her mouth. She swallows before she continues. “There’s a glow to them, of course, but no luster. Like that lighting-- the type you had at that salon, drab and white…”

“Um… fluorescent, you mean?” You tilt your head. “It’s designed to be a blank sort of light, to fill space more than anything else.”

“Yes, exactly.” Ruka points her fork your way. “Except that kind of lighting offers no sustenance when it comes to the soul. Blank is tantamount to empty. And it’s miserably common, from what I’ve seen of humans, that you’re either blank or moving toward it!”

You furrow your brows a bit, not sure whether to be insulted or not. On the one hand, yeah, people can be significantly unpleasant when they want to be, but on the other hand, you’re a human too, and you feel like you should probably be insulted by the insinuation that humans in general are...

“You said mine was… different, though?” You ask, keeping your voice even.

Ruka’s expression clears, growing pleased, and she nods enthusiastically. “Yes! Your soul is much more vibrant. I’ve seen a few humans since we came up to the surface with healthier hues, but none quite so impressive as yours. In fact, I can't be sure without asking permission to see it, of course, but I'd say yours rivals the Ambassador’s.”

You let out a small, thoughtful hum, twirling a bit of pasta onto your fork and taking a bite to have an excuse not to answer right away. The so-called Monster Ambassador was the same child who had climbed out of the rubble a few weeks before, if you recalled the news correctly. You really only remembered the fact that the monsters always corrected people to referring to the kid with neutral, they/them pronouns, and that they had needed a sign language translator because they preferred signing to speaking aloud. It had struck you as an almost unfortunate circumstance that they'd ended up in a political speaker position, what with the discomfort with speaking aloud.

Nonetheless,  even without vocalizing their words, the kid had a presence that was definitely making an impression. You’d seen them on news programs sometimes, out of the corner of your eye at work, when one of the TVs is set to the news. They always held themself tall and didn't back down from challenges.

You’re still not sure about the whole “colors of the soul” thing but you guess the monsters have been… considering you as on their side? Equating you with their small human political ambassador? You’ve been around enough casual derogatory commentary to figure that that’s probably a big thing for them.

You swallow your food, and smile. If they consider you a friendly face for just being a decent person, then you’re certainly not complaining! “Okay then. Neat.”

“It’s not a bother?” Ruka adds, almost secondarily, “That some of us can and probably have been picking you out of a crowd or, or seeking you out as someone to talk to?”

You shrug, “I’m admittedly not as caught up with the whole… thing… as some other people might be.” you gesture vaguely around, trying to condense ‘monster freedom and integration’ into one general gesture. “But if you’re asking if I have trouble with monsters in general, then I think this lunch might have not done enough to clear that up. I generally don’t… care?”

“Don’t care?” Miri repeats.

“That you’re not hu--” you stop yourself frowning, “...god that sounds horrible out loud. That we’re different species? No, worse.” you let out a frustrated huff, “I just-- you’re just people to me. Everyone’s kinda in that same -- amalgamous -- blob of faces just trying to get through life. Me included.”

Ruka laughs a bit, her own chin in a hand, still considering you. One of her eyes is closed. You’re not sure if she’s trying to do that ‘overlay of light’ thing to study your soul or not.

“I figure,” you continue, trying not to think about that, “that life’s hard enough for everyone without making it unnecessarily harder on anyone. So like, if we keep getting monster patrons at the salon, and they keep funnelling to me, I’m not going to turn them away? And if I’m the only nail tech in the city who’ll attend to monsters, then that’s on everybody else, not on me.”

Miri lets out a small burp, having finished her food while you and her mother were talking, and the serious moment is shattered. You snort into your hand at the pure timing of it all. “And on that note,” you assert, putting your fork down. “Let’s see about getting the check, yeah? I should get back to work pretty soon here.”

“Our treat--” Ruka starts, but you shake your head.

“We’ll split it.” you grin. “Maybe I’ll let you treat me next time.”

You keep up with the friendly banter between Ruka and her daughter as you clean up the leftovers of your meal in to-go boxes, and you spend a moment or so working with the waiter about getting the check split halvsies, monster gold on one half and human cash on the other. By the time you're heading to the door and saying your goodbyes, your day has gotten significantly better.

You part ways at the restaurant and head back to work, where the rest of the day passes in quiet, comforting monotony only broken up by having to forcefully ignore the terrible people known as your coworkers. The drive home is equally quiet, even more so when you leave the city limits and start up the dusty dirt roads leading up to the mountain’s base.

The trees seem to part for you when your turn comes up, a fact that had felt mildly foreboding when you first bought the house -- it was as though the woods were opening their maw to swallow you whole, back then -- but now it feels almost special. It’s your turnoff, the smaller road off of the already pretty rundown city-outskirts road, the one that winds through the trees until it reaches the little clearing where your house is, and it’s so hard for anyone else to find but the trees just seem to open up when you come up towards it. You feel yourself smiling as you turn.

Likewise, the rundown little cabin in the woods might not be much to look at, but it’s getting there.

You’ve still got to pull the weeds in the clearing around the house, and see about cutting the grass since it’s getting to be around your mid-shin… and there’s still the matter of the potholes and the rain-indents on the side of the house where the ground is no longer even, you’ll need to buy dirt for that… and you managed to unearth an ages-old overgrown gardening bed a week or so ago when you couldn’t stay focused on your coursework for another minute more, so maybe you’ll get that turned over and weeded and maybe you can start a little herb garden... still have to paint the outer walls of the house, too, and get the gutter cleaned out, it’s starting to get clogged up…

You let the dog in while your mind is bouncing from to-do to to-do, and it’s not until you’re sitting down and pulling your shoes off that you finally stop and blink, and look down at the floor next to you, where Toby is sitting patiently with his tail scruffing over the old hardwood floors. You hadn’t even noticed him consciously, but he had been sitting on your front porch, and had trotted inside without needing to be prompted once you had opened the door.

He’s also got a long bundle of fabric hanging out of his mouth, of a bright apricot colored red-orange. He drops it willingly when you reach for it, letting you take the worn-soft material without a fuss. It’s square, a bit frayed around the edges, with knot-wrinkles around two opposing corners and a crease down the center connecting them -- a bandana, you realize, though it’s… about twice as big as a usual bandana, if your estimate is right. You ponderously fold it over along the crease and hum in confused thought, because the creased edge is almost four feet long, and it hangs about two feet down to the final corner. Definitely bigger than a usual bandana.

“Where did you get this?” you ask, a bit dubious, not sure what to make of this occurrence. First the stray dog you helped once a few weeks ago shows back up on your front porch, and then he gives you a big, worn bandana?

Toby barks, almost like he’s answering your question, his tail wagging a bit more vigorously, before he hops up to his feet and trots into the living room, where you see him hop onto the couch and promptly fall asleep.

For a moment, you’re thrown. You should probably set about trying to find out who his owner is, since that was your first plan when you helped him out a few weeks ago, but you have a nagging feeling that he’ll probably run off and disappear again before you get the chance -- and anyway, he’s not your dog, he’s not your responsibility. You’re just gonna do what you can to make sure he’s got food and water whenever he visits, and that’ll be that. You resolve to put out a bowl of water and a plate of torn up leftover chicken for him later.

You look back down at the fabric in your hands again, running your thumbs lightly across the tattered edges, your mind racing, before you shake your head to clear your thoughts. Tearing up an entire overgrown garden isn’t going to get done with you just sitting here fretting over nothing, after all.

You fold the triangle in half into a smaller triangle and tie it off around your skull. You’ll worry about wheres and whys later -- for now, you’ve got work to do.

Chapter Text

An odd decision. I must insist. It seems a mismatch. Are you quite certain…?

…!

Very well. I suppose the other one. Also seemed to be a mismatch. At first.

I will give you. The benefit of the doubt.

We will see how this one. Plays out.

The ivy growing up one of the sides of your house would probably be pretty and worth trying to keep if it weren't also obscuring the once garden bed. As it is, you're kind of starting to despise it, because you know that cutting away the bottom bit of it will mean you need to clear the rest of it out, because cutting the bottom away will mean the rest of it is going to die and dry up and it'll be ugly and clinging to the battered old roofline like a parasite leeching onto your house. You're almost beginning to regret deciding to unearth this dumb garden bed in the first place. It's not like you haven't got enough to work on and fix, after all, the fact that the indoors is now more or less livable is a sign enough of that.

You've got two entire expanses of craggy ground on either side of your house that are overgrown. You could have started anywhere in the entire clearing! You could've started with the path that led up to your house, with clearing the weeds from the packed in dirt, finishing the grassy edges of your ‘driveway’, tugging up the scraggly brushwood from the forest's edge, anything ! But instead you're here, swearing and sweaty and miserable,  trying to untangle vinery without needing to turn up the entire root system and tear down the pretty jade leaves from the paneling up the walls.

It's a bit of a fixer upper, they said. We're selling it dirt cheap, they said. It’s a deal of a lifetime if you like projects, they said! You're snarling a bit while you wipe sweat from your face with the edge of the bright orange-red bandana. The weeds and vines and leaves are spilling out over the chipped old flagstones you'd found that indicated a walled in garden bed, and in order to get at the messy tangle of weeds underneath and loosen up the soil for planting, you need to get rid of the top layer of tangled vines somehow and you're frustrated .

You flop backwards into the overgrown grass, sighing loudly and staring upward into the pale, blurry, blue-gray sky for a moment. The looming expanse of Mount Ebott cuts off your view of it after a certain point, and the light is fading fast. “I’m beginning to wonder why I was the only one dumb enough to buy this place.” you announce to the sky. “It definitely looked like it hadn’t been owned for over a century.”

The sky, being non-sentient, does not answer you back. You groan and push your glasses back down onto your nose, trying to work up the will to either try again or just suck it up and realize you can’t keep the pretty vines and have an herb garden, at least not in this particular spot. Not without outright re-growing the ivy in a controlled sense.  And tearing up the ivy well enough to get it off the walls is going to take longer than you think the light will last.

After a moment you let out another aggravated groan and sit up again. You’ll have to add it to your list of ‘things to tackle on my next off day’. And if you’re not going to get this part done, then you’re at least going to set up your laundry line like you’ve been meaning to for the last several weeks. It’s not super expensive to keep taking your clothes to the laundromat in town, but you’re still aware of how all those little weekly trips will add up.

You tug off your gardening gloves and set them down on the porch, reaching instead for your water bottle and pausing only long enough to pat Toby on the head. He’d trooped outside after a while of you struggling against the vines, and had taken a spot on the porch just sort of watching you contemplatively, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. You sit beside him to take your drink and huff.

“You know,” you muse to Toby, “there’s times where you really seem like you’re more at home here than I am. You’re practically melting into the porch wood.”

Toby just stares up at you for a minute,  panting slightly, before he clambers up to his feet with a stretch and a yawn. He shakes himself out like he did when you washed him, before giving you one more loll-tongued grin, and jerking to the side in one quick motion. You yelp in surprise at the sudden movement, giving him a few seconds too many -- he snatches your gardening gloves from the porch in his teeth, turns on the spot, and jolts off into the brush.

“Toby-- no!” you yelp, pushing to your feet, but the overgrown grass is almost taller than he is and he’s fast ; it’s only a few seconds before he’s off into the woods again and too far out of sight to track. You whine slightly, staring into the trees, already knowing that there’s no way you’ll be able to chase him down -- even if you were in better shape, you’d still be hard pressed to keep up with him. “Those were my favorite gloves…” you complain softly, with a hint of petulance in your voice. “Damn dog.”

You glance down at your hands, at the way the excess flesh presses outward around the plastic of your water bottle. You feel like you’re too soft around the edges, like there’s too much give, and not enough...  something.

Hesitantly, you put the water bottle down and bend over to try and touch your toes. It’s been quite a few years, and the porch wood is coarse and needs to be sanded down, and you bite your lip at the sparking pain of splinters in the pads of your fingers. You can’t even bend all the way over anymore. Your knees tremble and you feel wretched.

You used to be able to bend enough to put your head between your knees. To press your palms against the ground, to raise a foot up and back over you -- you’d been able, once, to flip backward and stand again, all on a five inch wide surface.

It’s been a few years since you quit gymnastics. You stand up again and wrap your arms around yourself, fighting down a surge of low burning nausea. You'd never had time to continue it, what with college classes and your new job shortly out of high school and finding a house on a non-existent budget and renovating that house to make it livable on a non-existent budget…

You knew you'd gained a fair amount of stress weight. Half of your wardrobe is packed away to show that, all of those comfy workout pants and the bras that had seemed to get smaller by the day. You'd salvaged the oversized t-shirts, but now they were just… t-shirts.

You'd been refusing to let yourself acknowledge it, the deliberate shift you made from athletic-pretty to business-casual, hopefully professionally-pretty. Despite the murmured sneers all around you about your weight -- old gymnastics friends commenting on Facebook in shock at how you'd let yourself go and a slew of snide comments on any picture you posted -- your coworkers whispering beached whale around you when they thought you couldn't understand --

You'd pushed through it all. You had to. If you weren't allowed to gain stress weight then you'd just be stressing even more.

You glance at your laundry line and the heavy posts you would have to impale into the ground to get it up, then at the rest of the overgrown yard and all that you hadn't been able to do, and then up at the quickly shadowing sky again. You think about the splinters you accumulated from just the short attempt at bending over, and about the coarse wood on the posts, and how your good pair of gardening gloves is off somewhere in the city-wide area in the jaws of a tiny, fluffy, annoying-ass dog.

You cap your water bottle with a petulant frown and stomp up the stairs to your front door. You suppose that you’re not going to get done what you wanted to get done tonight. Stupid dumb annoying dog, why does he even want your gardening gloves, anyway?

“Sans, have you seen my bandana?!”

It was still wild to Frisk to hear Papyrus being mostly moderate, volume-wise. He’d been loud and vivacious in the underground for so many resets that it hadn't really even occurred to them that he could be any quieter than a mild bellow. But they supposed it made sense -- the monsters were above ground,  now, and most humans would flinch back away from a 7 foot tall skeleton yelling in their face. Papyrus was considerate enough to tone himself down, even if his voice did tend to still have a bit more… oomph than most.

“can’t say i have, bro.”

Sans, on the other hand, was still just as unhelpful and blithe as Frisk recalled. He was laying on the couch with a book open down the middle, resting on his face and covering his eyes. Frisk bit down on a smile from where they were doing their maths at the table in their new house on the surface, chewing on the eraser of their pencil to keep themself from laughing at him. Specifically saying, Sans wasn’t lying-- he hadn’t really seen anything for at least the last hour.

Toriel, sitting across from Frisk, cast a quick glance over toward Sans with a faint, amused smile of her own, before tapping her furry fingers against the paper in front of Frisk again to prompt them to focus again. They reluctantly turned their head back down to the paper. Maths wasn’t their best subject, so they were fairly frustrated by the slew of numbers on the page.

“Oh,” Papyrus called back, sounding a little frustrated himself. “I was rather hoping you had some clue, since today’s the big day for Undyne and I and-- you know, little comforts!”

Frisk snuck a glance back up, fidgeting in their seat. It was a big day, for everyone actually -- it’d been steps, one at a time, first getting at least a temporary plan set up for Monster Gold conversion so that the monsters could buy things until they were kitted out with surface money, jobs, and the like; then the process of making sure that they at least had the chance to not be discriminated against in getting those jobs, to be paid surface money, to make the transition; then the first meetings with politicians, King Asgore making negotiations for his people while Frisk furiously argued in the monster’s favor…

Still, the first monster owned surface business was going to be started by Papyrus and Undyne! Even Grillby hadn’t gotten his restaurant up and running on the surface yet -- something about FDA regulations and making sure that Monster Food wasn’t going to be harmful to humans.

And a gym! They were going to have the chance to do physical training, which they both enjoyed, and to help humans and monsters get active and get strong. Undyne’s strength and exercise regimen paired with Papyrus’ enthusiasm and encouragement was sure to be a success in that regard, Frisk just knew it.

No matter how amused Chara had sounded when they’d whispered this is gonna be a train wreck in the back of their head when the idea was first proposed.

Toriel cleared her throat minorly as she noticed Frisk avoiding looking down at their maths work, and Frisk let out an expressive sigh as they looked back down at the page in front of them.

“i’m sure you’ll be fine, bro,” Sans called out, still slightly muffled by the book covering his face. “it’s probably gonna be a bit slow at first anyway. not a lotta folks are gonna be immediately interested in gym going.”

You certainly aren’t. Chara snarked. Frisk nearly choked on the urge to snort at that.

Sans pushed the book up enough to look over at them with a lazy grin, before dropping it back down.

“Have you checked the laundry line outside, Papyrus?” Toriel asked, rolling her eyes fondly and closing her book. “It might have been in the last batch that's out there drying right now.”

Papyrus lit up from the kitchen doorway, “Oh! I have not, thank you miss Toriel!”

He made his way over to the back door and tugged it open to go out and check the line,  but before he could step outside, he yelped as a small, ever familiar white fluff ball went barreling between his legs into the house with a few muffled yips. He fell against the door jamb with a muttered (for him, so average toned for most) oath of “ stars! ”

The fluff ball, AD, ran around him in a couple more circles with a few more excited yips before finally skidding to a stop and plopping into a sit, dropping whatever he was holding at Papyrus’ feet and panting proudly. His tail was wagging in enthusiastic sweeps against the cheap linoleum floor as he stared up at Papyrus expectantly.

“You!” Papyrus blurted, partially out of habit and partially out of familiar annoyance. “Stars, and I had been enjoying not suffering your aggravation!”

Ah, Toby then, Chara noted, dismissively, before, don't forget to carry the two, Frisk.

Frisk made a soft verbalization of understanding, scribbling the digit in the proper spot and circling the answer to the problem that had been frustrating therm.

“oh, hey tobes.” Sans was half sitting up again, pushing the book out of the way enough to watch Toby nudge whatever he'd had a little closer to Papyrus.

Papyrus, for his part, reluctantly knelt down to scoop up the item-- no, scratch that, items, it was a pair of gloves. They looked like the kind that were dipped in paint-like plastic on the palms, like the type that he'd seen being sold for gardening, when he last looked into that old-favorite hobby up here. They were a softened, kind of rosy shade of dusky gray-violet, well-worn; the plastic was just starting to split and crumble a bit from the fabric.

Papyrus twisted them in one hand, trying to figure out what was so important about a pair of gloves that the dog was now staring up at him expectantly, big black eyes boring into smaller black eye sockets, waiting . There wasn’t really much to react with.

“Is this some sort of apology, then?” he asked, and Toby gave one short, aggravated whuff, his tail stopping from its wag. “You stole my last pair, as I recall.”

Toby gave one more soft growl, looking put out.

“Or were these stolen as well?” Papyrus accused, mostly without heat. Toby’s ears folded backward and he gave a short, pitiful whine.

“ah, leave the poor mutt alone.” Sans called out. “you were looking for new gardening gloves, take it as a good fortune.”

“I would!” Papyrus griped, “Except he’s acting like I’m wrong and silly for asking if it’s a good fortune gift!”

Toriel blinked from the table, “Why… pardon my asking, but why are you both acting as though…”

“as though the dog knows what he’s doing?” Sans asked, glancing over at her and heaving himself up with a short grunt of effort. Frisk snuck out of their chair and under the table while Toriel’s attention was stolen by Sans’ movement -- Toby happily trotted over to them to bump his head against their chin, and to get spoiled with scratches behind the ears, under the tablecloth. “because he does,” Sans finished, grinning his usual lazy grin and shrugging.

“The pest has been a pain in my rear for several years--” Papyrus groused, setting the gloves on the small table near the door. “Stealing items, bringing me other items, and generally annoying me within an inch of sanity.”

“he’s a good pup.” Sans agreed, chuckling.

“He’s a menace!”

Toriel hid a small laugh behind one of her hands, and Sans shrugged his jacket back onto his shoulders, rolling his head and making the bones of his neck crackle against each other, “he’s not a dog, specifically speakin’.” he shrugged again, “dunno what he is for sure, whether he’s a monster or somethin’ else, but… eh. rules are kinda wonky around him.” he grinned again, “toby is pretty much the reason i got interested in quantum physics, actually.”

“What?” Toriel laughed, incredulous.

“‘m serious.” Sans chuckled, “the dog does weird stuff to the fabric of reality. it’s hilarious.”

Under the table, Frisk pressed their forehead down against Toby’s furry one, letting Chara’s big and secret grin spread across their face and rolling their head back and forth, letting the First Child have a moment with an old friend.

I’m surprised no one else knows, Chara was laughing in the back of their head, and Frisk could visualize the much sharper-edged child like a ghost surrounding their own form, with their own forehead pressed against Toby’s, You’re not exactly hiding it, you crazy old dog.

Toby wagged his tail, panting with obvious delight, and swiped a big, slobbery kiss up Frisk’s face in response -- and Frisk spared no doubt that he was responding to Chara. They muffled their laughter into his fur, and and when the visualization of Chara rubbed the slobber right back off into it, Frisk did the same. There were few things that Frisk knew brought Chara legitimate joy, but if they could do little things that let that happen, then they would.

There were also short visualizations that let Frisk be clued in on what Chara was referring to -- the fact that this same dog had trailed after them whenever they went on short ‘adventures’ with Asriel, sometimes helping and sometimes hindering, but as ancient and probably even more so than Chara themself was. The fact that this same dog had an amazing knack for squeezing into places that were much smaller than he should be able to, going almost liquid-like and immaterial to do so. The fact that they’d seen him, themself, absorb a ball into his fur and had then turned around to realize their backpack was also full of furry white goop.

But along with these, short images of Toby as even less of a dog-like entity. Scattered memories that Frisk was sure were not their own, no matter how many timeline shenanigans and resets they’d gone through. There were moments of time being shifted around, of jokes that carried over from previous timelines and growing more poignant just by worth of having had that reset between them. Chara restarting days several times just because something didn’t go right, and the dog making tally marks in the dirt as he followed along after them, always one more than the last time through, tally marks remaining despite the clock and everything else setting itself back. Scattered leaves, a half-feral monster that’d gone mad with their imprisonment, Chara on their back, and a large white form blocking the feral monster from the First Child that seemed to be almost blurry around the edges, insubstantial and taking up more space than there was space in the place where he stood.

Frisk couldn’t tell you what that dog was, and neither could Chara, but Toby wasn’t a normal dog, nor was he a Monster of the usual sense. He was something older, and much more powerful.

Mangy mutt. God-dog. Chara was cooing, Are you manipulating the rules of the universe for fun again? I thought we learned already that that’s mean.

Toby barked softly, wagging his tail.

You’ve found a new Protagonist, haven’t you?

Another short bark, and a pleased look, while he rolled onto his back for belly scritches.

What’s the genre this time? Chara asked, prompting Frisk to comply with the belly rub bribery. Adventure? Drama? Anagram, like that last one? Or, wait, no, that was G’s thing, strike that… uhhhh… horror? No? You did let the domesticity rewrite thing happen already, I don’t think you’d go for that again…  Political drama? Political drama would work well now that everyone’s on the surface.

What about a comedy? Frisk asked, mildly intrigued now that they had gotten the gist of Chara’s line of questioning. He seems to like causing mischief.

Toby’s tail gave a short thumping wag.

Comedy’s close. Chara interpreted. Uhhh… Morbid humor? Slapstick?

Romantic comedy? Frisk offered, mostly joking.

Toby barked, and his tail wagged harder.

Romcom?! Chara was laughing now, Oh, gods, yes, I need to see this. Who’s the unlucky bastard this time?

“Frisk, you really should at least try your math work instead of attempting to escape from it--” Toriel griped as the tablecloth was lifted enough to shed light underneath it, and Toby leapt to his feet and dashed out around her whilst Frisk was still adjusting the sudden resurgence of light. By the time they could see again, Toby was sitting right at Papyrus’ feet, wagging his tail and back to looking entirely too pleased with himself as he looked between Papyrus and the set of gloves that Papyrus had put down.

And Frisk couldn’t help but feel a small surge of their own morbid delight, because they knew that Protagonists were shaped by the circumstances of their story, just like they were; what would the person be like, they wondered, that would be chosen for someone who meant so much as Papyrus?

This, Chara started dryly, already sounding about as sarcastically delighted as Frisk had ever heard them, is gonna be fucking hilarious .

Chapter Text

Ruka comes in a week after she last brought Miri in, signs in at the register, and sits down without needing to be prompted since she can see you’re with another monster customer already, and there are two other women in the waiting area so she knows she’s probably in for a wait. You’re quietly gabbing with the bunny customer (if she’s not wrong, that looks like Sidney, the sweetheart from Snowdin) and have about four colors of nail polish sitting next to you on the table that you’re swapping between for each nail.

Ruka is quiet while she watches you with a smile on her face, watches the way you wave the nail polish brushes around while you talk, midway through painting each nail and somehow not dribbling anything off of them regardless of your animated conversation; the way you’re gossiping with Sidney as comfortably as you did with any monster, invested in Sidney’s words while commiserating over your own observations; the way your soul flickers just beyond the edges of her perception, bright and healthy and jewel-toned. She watches, in short, more evidence of you being a good soul, one who was safe for Monsters to approach.

Sidney, she thinks, seems to be less animated than she usually is, but only just -- there’s a ruffled quality to her fur, and the fur beneath her eyes in particular is less lustrous than it could be, and she seems almost subdued. Ruka watches you nodding along to the conversation and studies your expression, trying to read what she can of it to understand. There’s a pinched, sort of melancholic look in your eyes, she thinks, understanding and comforting all at once -- not malicious, but full of a kind of pity that feels familiar. She’s not good at reading lips, but expressions tell so much more sometimes, and she thinks she might understand why Sidney is so subdued.

You finish off the last couple of nails in bright, sunny colors, capping the nail polish and tucking Sidney’s paws into the UV light emitter, putting your chin in one hand and gesticulating as you speak. Ruka can just barely make out the shape of the word “relationships” on your lips and her suspicion is confirmed.

Sidney had been dating Venus, the toothy flytrap monster who lived down in Waterfall, but who regularly trekked to Snowdin for Grillby’s food, for as long as Ruka could really recall. But if she was understanding things correctly, it seemed that the relationship had fallen apart upon reaching the surface. 

Sidney had been more reclusive since their freedom, Ruka knew, so it was nice to see her finally getting out more. Especially considering she seemed to finally be talking to someone about how things had fallen out. After a moment, Sidney pulled her hands out of the UV light and gave you a small smile, nodding her head in thanks and following you up to the register to pay.

As Ruka had experienced before, your persona was entirely professionally cheerful while you finished up the sale, and she watched you turn to the list of waiting customers as Sidney left.

You looked up at the small cluster of waiting customers and read the next name on the list. 

The customer-to-be, a rather pinched looking woman with a dark indigo blue soul, put on possibly the fakest smile that Ruka had ever seen, and she was sure that you knew it was fake as well. The customer had watched Sidney with a malicious sort of intensity as the bunny monster had made her way out of the salon, and was now looking at you rather like she had smelled something vile.

“If it’s quite alright ,” she started, voice venomously sweet, “I actually have a preferred nail technician. I’ll wait for her.”

Your face goes tight, even in its polite smile, and Ruka feels an odd sense of dread as you glance down at the list again. “Of course. In that case--”

“If it’s all the same to you,” the other human customer in the waiting area (mustard yellow, almost slimy and brown) interrupted, also sickly sweet, “I would also prefer to wait.”

There’s a small tic under your eye, but it’s so miniscule that Ruka’s pretty sure she’s the only one who could possibly have noticed it, given her quiet observation. “Of. Of course.” You grit out, holding onto your smile and your polite demeanor by the skin of your teeth. “Ruka, then?”

Ruka stands up without a word, casting one deliberate, pointed stare at the two other women, her expression carefully relaxed but giving them a very clear once over before turning her back on them and toward you. The sounds of one of them biting down on a sputter told her that her intended message of ‘your attitude isn’t worth the space you take up’ had been received.

“You gotta teach me how to do that.” you joke as you lead her back over to your station, voice still slightly tight.

“Do what?”

“Say so much without saying anything at all, that was elegant. ” You gesture for her to sit down, and Ruka does so, biting down on a small laugh. 

Your mood sobers again as you sort out your nail files and take a look at her claws. “That’s been happening more often,” you admit softly, “Usually after monster customers, but a couple of the regulars now refuse to have me as their tech. They’re never blatant about it, about this level of petty bullshit is usually pretty consistent.”

“And you haven’t responded to it, yet?” Ruka asks, while you start filing the blunted points back into respectable ones. Her voice is calm, with the patience brewed from years upon years of being a mother to a wild child.

“I can’t,” you retort, “It’d cost me my job.” Your eyes are lowered, focused on her claws with an intensity that belies anxiety. Your voice lowers, gets a bit more distant. “As is, I’m probably going to need to start looking for another job to supplement anyway. I need to keep a fairly steady cash flow to finish off my bachelors...”

“Your… pardon?”

“Oh--” you start, looking up at her, “Sorry, um. Stress-talking to myself.”

“Oh,” Ruka chuckled, a bit flustered herself, “Sorry, I’m just, still trying to learn some about how humans do things up here, you said a word that didn’t quite match my… perceived understanding?”

“I did?”

“Bachelors, as I understand, are eligible young men without romantic ties.”

“Oh!” you laugh, “Oh, no, that’s, yeah, that’s a definition here too, but I was referring specifically to the Bachelor's degree, it’s-- it’s the secondary level of college degree, higher education, you know?” You pull the file away from the claw you’ve been working on, ducking your head in almost embarrassment, “I’ve been keeping up my classes mostly by virtue of scholarships and trying to minimize other stresses. I’ll get reimbursed for the loans as long as my grades are good.”

It’s pretty obvious by Ruka’s expression that she’s not quite following what you’re saying, so you hum and try to think of a good way to explain the concept of college and good-grade loans. You’re about to explain it when she shakes her head with an understanding smile, “Never you mind,” she chuckles, “I can do my own research, though it’s an interesting concept.”

“I don’t mind…” you start, but she shakes her head again.

“I know you don’t. That’s why I don’t want to set a precedent.”

She takes her furred, pad-footed hand back with a small smile, considering the points of her claws and handing you the other paw. You blink, before setting yourself to filing those claws into points as well.

“...basically, though,” you offer, after a few long seconds of awkward silence, “I do need this job, currently. So until I can afford a month or two of job searching, I have to keep myself calm and in control.”

“And persevere.” Ruka smiles, and you glance up at her in mild confusion, not understanding the joke. She waves it away again.

“...yeah.” You allow softly, dropping your focus back to filing her claws into precise, sharp points. “Persevere is a good word for it.”

Persevere.

You groan into your hands, stressed beyond belief, as you hunch over your laptop at your desk and try, yet again, to make the current chapter of your textbook make sense. It’s late -- you should really be getting to bed soon if you want to be anywhere near some semblance of alive tomorrow -- but you promised yourself earlier that you were going to make this chapter outline tonight so that you would have something more sensible to study from, other than the garbled medical jargon cluttering up the pages of the textbook.

“Ugh.” you mumble into your hands, dragging your fingers down the length of your face and digging them into the dips of your eye sockets, trying to rub the budding headache out of your head. “Focus,” you snap at yourself, “Just-- focus . It’s just the classification of different spinal vertebrae. C-T-L-S-C. Cervical, Thoracic, Lumbar, Sacral, Coccyx! I should be able to remember this!”

You sit back in your chair and chant ‘C-T-L-S-C’ under your breath a few times, pressing your eyes tightly closed and willing the repetition to sink in.

After a moment, you take a deep breath and soothe the furrow from your brow, tilting your head back away from the screen and the book and rocking your chair back onto its hind legs. “Cervical. The neck bones. There’s 7.” you intone, with purpose. Briefly, you remember one of the online classmates in your class posting a joke video to the discussion threads, a “the skull is connected to the, neck bone” song parody with the neck-bone-connected-to-the-neck-bone for multiple times and ending in scan with ‘there are seven cervical vertebrae!’

Rgggh. No, come on. Focus.

“C-T-L-S-C.” you mutter again, furiously. “Cervical. Next is T for thoracic. Root word ‘thoraco’, as in thorax, as in the central body system contained between shoulders and pelvis. The thoracic vertebrae make up the…” there’s tension forming at your brow again as you try and remember the words out of your textbook. “The bulk length of the spine… between the shoulder blades and the small of the back. They’re the primary bones that the ribs attach to.”

Now if I can just remember how many ribs there are on a side then I should be able to remember how many thoracic vertebrae there are…

Your hand twitches toward your side and you abort the movement with a faint grimace. No, you think furiously, I have to memorize this, I can’t go counting my own ribs every time I need to remember how many T-vertebrae there are. I’ll make a note of that. Memorize the vertebral numbers again.

“C-T-L… Lumbar. Like lumbar support in chairs, the-- the lower back.” Your thoughts feel a little swishy as you fight down a yawn. “Ugh… they’re the… the ones between the end of the ribcage and the pelvis…”

You open your eyes, staring blearily up at the dark gray ceiling of your room. The chair under you is swaying back and forth under your foot flexing against the back of the desk, creaking faintly under your weight.

‘You oughtn’t be leaning back like that!’ You internally mock yourself, letting your thoughts take on a familiar and bitter tone. ‘You’ll fall backwards and crack your head open like an egg! ’

“Lumbar.” you intone again, biting down on the bilious frustration vying for your attention. “Cervical, thoracic, lumbar. Pay attention , brain.” You tilt the chair back forward again, covering your eyes with a hand to keep from looking at the book. “There’s-- five, I think, five lumbral vertebrae, then it hits the pelvis. And under the pelvis is the coccyx, the tailbone--” you frown, tapping your fingers against the book to the rhythm as you mutter under your breath again, “--wait, C-T-L-S-C… shoot.”

S. I’m missing the S.

Come on, what was the S?

“Cervical, thoracic, lumbar, something, coccyx.” You iterate, feeling like the word you’re looking for is right on the tip of your tongue but refusing to come to you. Your fingers continue tapping, the polish on the nails coming loose from your distracted gnawing. “Come on… it’s the one that goes through the pelvis, it’s… a merged one, I know that, it’s like the tailbone that way, what was it’s damn name …?”

Your foot flexes over and over again in mounting annoyance before you finally let out an aggravated sigh and remove your hand from your eyes to look down at the book.

“ Sacral! ” you groan, slamming your hand against the wood in defeat. Your palm stings and you regret it immediately.  “God. Ow.”

 You tilt back in your chair again, tilting your head back until your neck hurts, and glare forlornly up at the ceiling as you repeat: “Cervical, Thoracic, Lumbar, Sacral, Coccyx. Cervical, Thoracic, Lumbar, Sacral, Coccyx. Cervical, Thoracic, Lumbar, Sa --”

Your chair over-balances.

“--aaaah FUCK--!” you yelp as you crash backwards onto the floor, jamming your leg painfully against the top ridge of your desk and sending pens and loose sheaves of paper flying. Your eyes go cross when your head hits the floor. A paper flutters down, obscenely gently, and lands balanced between your forehead and the tip of your nose.

... OW.

“...okay.” you finally groan hoarsely, closing your eyes and acquiescing to the demands of an uncaring universe as your leg throbs and your head pounds. “Fine. Enough for tonight. Goddamnit.”

Enough homework, at least. There was now the new work of cleaning up the desk. Papers, which had to be put back in the right order, pens and pencils-- at least one of them lost the nubbin tip, you were sure you’d find it later in your foot. Was that stuff even safe if it got under the skin? You can’t remember what it’s called. Something-ite. You know as soon as your mind begins to drift off later, you’ll remember and be annoyed you couldn’t do so sooner. 

-- God, it’s late.

With the pile back on the desk, you flick off the flexible metal lamp that sat clamped to the desk side. If not for the difference in base, it was oddly alike to the little dancing one in the Pixar logo...intro...thing. Animation? The noise of the metal lamp base crushing the capital I is seared into your mind the way the name of the ass bone will never be.

(It’s still too early for it to be this fucking late. )

The steps to the bed take too long for it to only be across the room. It takes you that long before you realize you never changed out of your day clothes and into something like, not uncomfortable to sleep in. And while you don’t doubt you can fall asleep in your slacks and blouse if you take your bra off, you don’t really want to.

You take a look at the dresser. So far... You’re about to just strip and sleep in the nude out of unwillingness to expend the effort, until you realize you’re going to need to be up at least for a bit longer anyway to tend to the edges of your nails. You really can’t work at a nail salon and not have a decent set of your own.

With a groan and a lurch you make your way over to the dresser, stripping as you go -- you might as well change now that you’re here; it’d suck to get polish on your clothes anyway. Well, your work clothes, anyway. Nightclothes are a free land where stains of polish or food are not only allowed, but prolific.

You dig around in your drawer of polish for the ziplock bag of Work Polish, pluck it out without fanfare, and toss it to the bed as your other hand dives for some kind of long shirt to pull on. Your grip finds a groovy tie-dye monstrosity that you don’t remember making and you wrestle it onto your body on the way back to bed.

It shouldn’t take too long for a quick touch-up, but luck doesn’t feel like it’s with you tonight.

It would be a lot easier if the salon didn’t require you to only use their brands at work. They crack and chip like the dickens if you so much as breathe on them wrong, which is extra bad for you considering how much you torture them on a daily basis, between working, living, and chewing them down almost uncomfortably low.

You aren’t sure if the customers suffer the same fate -- no one’s ever come in and complained, but maybe they expected it ahead of time. Would the monsters have though? Maybe underground it would have been a similar tradition?  You experience a sudden wave of misplaced guilt at the prospect of your clients finding their nice mani ruined by the next day. Surely… surely Ruka would have told you if that was the case, right? She and Miri had been coming by for some time now, as had other monsters. 

And you’ve been honest with the monsters, so they’d surely be honest with you. Especially about something like this. You relax your shoulders after the inward reassurance and get to work uncapping the needed bottles. Remover first, and the clean-up brush you DIY-ed using an old paintbrush and some carefully maneuvered scissors. You dull the chipped ends down as smooth as you can, shake it off to let it dry and set the nail polish remover aside, open and balanced precariously on a semi-stable bit of blanket, in case you fuck up your touchup. 

Usually you’d just go over the empty space with the matching base color, but tonight you go for a contrasting edge, sort of a bastardised french tip. Or one might consider it an actually-fun-to-look-at-french-tip. 

You’re tired and the fumes are heavy in your admittedly poorly ventilated room, but at least the design is simple and quick even with your sluggish hands. The steady tick and subsequent tock of your nightstand clock is inordinately loud as you wait for the fresh stripes on your nails to dry, slowly deciding that once the finger-print test didn’t come back positive that you would just pass out for the night and deal with a top-coat in the morning. You can quick gloss them over and let them dry in the morning sun on the drive to work, you’re sure.

Impatiently you watch five minutes pass in chunks, testing the nails with your pinky to limited success and gently buffing the marks back out from them to wait another few minutes.

At long last, they’re dry enough that you can sleep, as long as you’re careful to not bury your fingers in or under anything too textured. Between the calm waiting and the still-lingering fumes in the room, sleep comes reasonably easy to you. Almost shockingly easy, if you’re being honest, you observe as you drift off into a comfortable darkness while the distant lilt of the neck-bone song plays in your mind’s periphery.

Tomorrow is another day.

Chapter Text

Your hands are slow to respond while your focus is so splintered by tiredness. French tips are something you should be able to do in your sleep, especially considering all of the foundation work is already there. All you’re doing is adding a layer to cover up the chipped tips. Still, you find yourself mumbling curse words as you fuck up for the fifth time on the same finger.

You’ve done this sort of thing at work so many times that it isn’t even funny. Why is it being difficult right now? You mutter another insult down at your hands and scrub off the nail polish again. The fumes from the nail polish remover are starting to sting at your eyes, which are already straining against the desire for sleep…

You’ve been at this for too long. You’re almost afraid to look at the clock, its steady ticking and subsequent tocking seeming to chastise you.

You try again, and fuck up again, and in a fit of irritation, you fling the brush across the room. It splatters against the wall above your desk, and you startle when you realize what you’ve done - that shade of black is never going to scrub off.

Huh. That’s strange. You…

You don’t recall picking out black.

Something about reality seems to slip sideways, as you stare down at your onyx black nails, at the stains rubbed into your bed sheets, at the open bottle of nail polish without it’s lid tucked securely in the bend of your knee. Hadn’t you picked out a glaring orange? Something to contrast the chipped purple you had already had on?

Slowly, like a pot of water coming to a boil, nail polish starts bubbling up out of the open bottle. The stain on the wall starts dripping, oozing downward toward your desk, and the black starts leaking down onto your leg from the bottle, an unnaturally chilled spreading stain.

You scoop it up from between your thigh and your calf, pinching the top between a finger and thumb and grimacing at the sticky, goopy feeling. The label - it can’t be one of the salon brands, the salon doesn’t carry very many dark colors. And the ones that they do carry are thin and frankly insulting to you. You’ve had your fair share of dark and attention grabbing nail polish urges over the years, but being that you were more or less required to use the salon’s brands, you’d stayed away from them mostly because the jewel tones made for better base colors.

The label is barely discernible under the continuing sludgy pour of nail polish, covered in what looks like shifting, hieroglyph like symbols. You squint at it, but it’s harder to read with every following second, as you realize the goopy blackness is leaking from where you’d spread it across your nails, too.

It’s never going to come out of your bed sheets, you note with some muted dismay.

It’s coming out of the bottle faster now, a steady drip that pools against your thigh, and you belatedly realize you should probably try and cap it again -- scrub it off your fingers, stop the growing stain, something . You fumble off of your bed and scramble toward your desk, where you’d flung the brush.

Your bare feet land in puddling blackness, sending chilling terror shooting up your spine. You look down. The floor is drenched , the black spreading rapidly underneath your bed and spreading up the frame, meeting the growing stain on your bed sheets halfway.

You jerk your head to the original splatter on the wall, only to find that it’s no longer a splatter. The blackness has claimed the window, and half of your desk, and is consuming the last corner of your notes on the spinal vertebrae as you watch.

The bottle in your hand is flowing , now, rising steadily into a gush, like a dam coming undone. The chill is consuming your hand, spreading up your arm, and you drop it with a squeal of alarm as it reaches up to your elbow, clawing up for every inch it can consume. The faint yellow orange glow from your bedside lamp is extinguished behind you, drenching the rest of the room in muted midnight hues, but even those are disappearing swiftly.

It’s up to your ankles now, and swiftly raising toward your knees.

H̳̮̤̝̲̪̫ͤ͊ͭ ̻͙̩͛ͪ͛ͨ͑Ĕ̫̙͚̳͍̗͉ͨ̒̎̍ͯ̋ ͉̍Ḷͣͨ̀ ̇̍̐̏̈͐̚L͔͇͚̖͓̮ͥ̀̊͌ ̫̜̣̹̹̙̬̀͋ͨͧ̇ͤO̠̱̞͊ͯͅ.

It isn’t a voice, but it burrows into your ears and echoes around in the back of your head like a demented memory. You wince, scraping fruitlessly at the stain on your arm, which has reached halfway to your shoulder. 

Your eyes can’t seem to decide what to look at - your desk, dresser, and bed have disappeared into the Vantablack, and the walls are swiftly being consumed right behind them. 

The wall with the window is gone. 

The wall with the door is gone.

It’s blacker than black - dark, darker, yet darker.

You look up and scream in terror as you realize that the ceiling is gone.

Ṕ̈ͪͦ ̩̓ͮ̔ͮͮL͖̤̩͇̯̰̳̇ͫ ͙̦̙̟̳̭̃͐̏͒ͦE̟̼̩̻̬̲̙͒̔ͨͣ̐̊ͭ ͫ̎A̤͉̫ͭ̆̇ ̱̤̘̳̘͆̈ͫ͐͒̎͐Ŝ̼̩̝͈̠̩ͯ ̤̥̟̥̑ͫE̖͆̉̊͂͛ ̞̝͍̙̣ͤD̜̗̪̞̓̏ ̣͕̺̍̅Ō̳̦ ̯͎̟͎̪̻͔ͤ̍̄N̮ͮͫ̅̔̉̉ͥ ̳ͤ͗̅ͬ̀'̥̝͍͇̳ͮ̽̉̐̉ ̼̜͕̭Ṱ̪̣͕͈̹̍ ̗̤̺̦̹͈̟̍ͧͤ̇ͫͩ̓F̫̜̍͊ͭ ̥ͨ̒̆̑̚I̻̥̻̲͉͋ ̹͕͉̗͉̗̥̀́͆ͣ̒̔G̠̥̯̣̭ͦ̎̾̚ ̊̈́ͥ̅́H ̜̼̭̦͉̻̩͒͗̑T̼̪̭̮̯͓ͯ̽̊.̯͍̱̝͙ͅ

It’s awful. With this much of it surrounding you, you can’t even pretend to hold onto the noxious fumes of cheap nail polish. You claw at it but it clings to your skin, inching further up your legs until it’s clinging to your hips, smelling alarmingly of mold and rancid rotting meat, like something forgotten and left to rot away, and full of such a chill that your lower extremities and the arm it’s covering feel numb. It’s starting to inch up your other hand, now, as well, and you let out a panicked sob as you step backwards and fall into it.

The floor is gone.You disappear into the goop, and you claw for the direction that you just registered as up , fruitlessly. You feel it gushing into your mouth, up your nostrils, into your ears, into every crevice it can reach, spreading underneath your eyelids, across your eyeballs, the chill sinking into your skull and wrapping around your brain .

You can’t breathe. You’re drowning in blackness, and panicking.

Iͫ̋͂̉ ͖̃̍͐O̤ͫ̓ͧ̊ͥ ̤͔̜̓ͯ̂̆̉̌N͖̱̳͇ ̫͉̺͕L̝͔̊̅ͤ̅̄ ̼̲̭̓͗ͥͩ͑Yͮͧ̾̚ ̗̪̘̠͙̈̓W͖̰̻̾̇͗̀͒̇ͣ ̃̈́̐I͙͉͐͑̍ ͕ͭ͊ͤS̩͉̫̠̭̰ͩ ̞̝͍͉̫ͧͨ͛͛͐H̜̭̫̫̝̣ͮ͆̃͂̇̃͒ ͧ̑Ť̻̺͚̹͊̐͊ ̫͕̳̾̀̔ͨ͊O̎ͪ̄ ͥ̇ͬͦS̻̻͎͋͋ͮ̉͗ P̜ͭ̂̅ ͑̌̈̍̄̐Ĕ͂ͬͬ ̥̩̆͗A ͓͓̙͔ͦͮ̎ͮK̭̜̗̠̼̻̭ ̘͊ͥͪ͆̽̄W̞ͣ̈ ̤̩̻̳̮̒͊́̽I ̱̽T̬̗͋͑̑̔̔ͅ ̿ͦ̿̑̎H͚̏ͩ͑͆ͦͅ ̾Y͓̘̭ ̔̔O U.

Your eyes snap open.

You still can’t see - can’t breathe - 

You flail, and inhale sharply and choke on fluff, and realize that the world around you isn’t black and freezing cold anymore. It’s white, and warm, and breathing . Somehow, you manage to quell the nightmare-induced panic and dislodge Toby from his place sleeping draped across your face. You place him to your side, sitting up and coughing up white fur tufts.

He gives a tiny, sleepy whine as your body shakes the bed underneath you, lifting his head up to peer up at you with a yawn that seems to split his face in two. His tail gives a couple of inquisitive thumps against your thrashing-trashed comforter, and you grumble and rub the tears out of your stinging eyes.

“How - ” you stammer into the predawn gray. “How the fuck did you even get inside? I-I closed the d-dog door last night.”

He yips quietly, stretching over to lick once at your knuckles before twisting himself onto his back, curling closer to your side and staring up at you with his big black eyes. You sigh, still shaken, and absently lower your hand to scratch and rub at his stomach. Somehow, the soft repetitive motion of petting the dog helps your heartbeat slow.

You’re afraid to look at the clock. A part of you just knows it’s gonna be disappointing. Something like less than an hour before your alarm is set to go off to get ready for work, or something.

So for several long seconds, you sit upright in bed and try to mentally prepare yourself to acknowledge that you might as well just get ready. Your fingers continue scratching absently at Toby, and he gives little pleased grumbling sounds, squirming under the attention. Finally, when you start to register the fact that your sheets are a sweaty tangled mess, and you’ll have to do laundry today, you sigh and wrestle your legs free from the fabric.

You scoop your glasses up off of the bedside table, scrubbing at them with your shirt briefly before you put them on and look at the clock. As you’d feared, you have about twenty minutes before the alarm goes off.

Toby rolls with you as you get out of bed, clearly trying to keep physical contact with you for as long as possible until you’re out of reach and he rolls up onto his feet again, stretching and shaking himself out. A few loose tufts of fur scatter off of him and float down to mix up with your sheets.

Definitely laundry day. You click your tongue and gesture towards the floor, and he dutifully hops down, allowing you to strip your bed with a brutal sort of efficiency. You’ll load your laundry basket into the backseat of your car and stop by the laundromat later today.

“How are you shedding ?” you grump down at him as he scratches at his collar and dislodges another couple of fluffs. “It’s almost mid-October. You should be getting more furry, not less.”

You try not to focus on the faint quiver of your voice, still shaken by the nightmare and the rough awakening, leaning down to scoop up the scattered clothing that’s littering your bedroom floor into your laundry basket. Toby trots after you, peering up at you with a quiet sort of intensity, his tail wagging a couple of times, slowly, whenever you pause to glance back at him.

“Guess I can add a stop to the groomers this evening, too.” you decide, more to yourself than anything, tossing your bra from last night on top of the pile in the basket, and plopping the laundry basket on top of the bed.

You head off into the bathroom, not noticing Toby’s long, considering look at the lacy floral bra on the top of the pile.

Your shift ends at two in the afternoon, today. It’s a good thing, it means you have time to do the errands you have planned, and still have time to swing back home to (hopefully) grab Toby for the tentative 5 PM appointment you made with the local groomer. You’d explained over the phone that the dog you were bringing in wasn’t so much your dog as one that keeps showing up on your porch, and he seemed to have a knack for disappearing when he’s done with you only to show up like, a week later. So, you had explained, there was a chance you would get back home and he’d be gone, in which case no appointment.

The groomer, a nice gal who’d been coming to the salon for a few years now - at least as long as you’ve been working there, since you moved out to the backwoods city under the mountain - had told you she’d keep the slot open for you, and if you couldn’t make it she’d handle a walk in, no issues. You’d thanked her for the favor while tossing your laundry in the machine at the laundromat, and leaned back against the washer while you hung up the phone.

You lean your head back and let the rumbly machine at your back be your timer, letting yourself think back on the rest of your day thus far while your clothes wash.

You’d wrapped the bandana around your head again, today. It had sort of just felt like a bed-head-and-comfy-jeans sort of day, so you’d picked your nicest pair of dark indigo jeans and a semi-classy goldenrod shirt to throw on, and had tied your messy hair under the soft peachy bandana. A few wild curls had stuck out in odd directions, and your coworkers had been about as pleasant as they always have been, but overall you hadn’t had the energy to care.

You’d been kind of hoping that one of the monster ‘usuals’ would drop in, but none of them did. Your dribble of human customers was slowly shrinking, as more and more petty bigots made their stances clear on your willingness to serve the monsters.

And to add an extra jolt of joy to your day, you’d found out at lunchtime that there was a mob of protesters picketing at the corner of the closest major intersection, in the parking lot of a stop-and-shop that you know has at least four monsters on hire. You’d made eye contact with each protestor that you passed, crossing the picket line and trying to do what Ruka’d been able to do -- that ‘you aren’t even worth my time’ look.

Honestly… protesting the fact that the shop was willing to hire monsters for minimum wage ? You’d ignored their screaming at you about not crossing the picket line and gone inside into a deathly quiet store, and fought for some sort of normalcy as you gathered a drink and a pre-made sandwich for lunch. The blue bunny monster behind the counter had grimaced out a smile at you when you set your choices on the counter.

“Good morning.” he’d chirped, but it was obviously forced. “How’s your day going?”

“Better than yours, I think,” you’d glanced to the side without turning your head, toward the still screaming protestors.

“Eh, we’ll manage. Sup, Wosh?” the bunny added the last couple of words over the counter, around you, and you had turned your head to see a little wash-bucket with a face on it had ambled up behind you and was staring up at you intently.

“Hi.” you’d lifted a hand while the bunny swiped your items across the scanner. The little bucket monster had blinked up at you, and bobbed its head.

“You… are clean.” it -- he? -- had declared. “You’re good.”

You’d not entirely been able to shake the feeling that that encounter had been meaningful, even though you couldn’t understand how…

You’re jolted out of your thoughts by a commotion at the front of the laundromat, right as you’re finishing off folding your clothes. A gleeful, high pitched yapping noise makes your shoulders straighten, and you lean out to see Toby skittering with his claws clicking against the linoleum, barreling straight toward you.

He latches his teeth around the bra in your hand and snags it right out from between your fingers before you can even react, and then skids, checks himself, and barrels back the other way, heading straight for the door.

You let out a yell, swinging around the machines and sprinting after him. It’s one thing for him to take a 7 dollar pair of gardening gloves, it’s another thing entirely for him to take your favorite damn bra! You paid almost 50 bucks for that thing!

“Catch that dog!” you holler breathlessly as you shove your way down the sidewalk, noting how people jump out of your way, just barely keeping him in sight as he rounds corners and kites around attempts like he can see the future. Despite the burning in your lungs and the stitch starting in your side, you keep sprinting, using light poles and mailboxes to push off of for the corners. He cuts across the street and into the park.

You skid through the park gate on his tail, wheezing a gasp and half-crashing into the nearest bench, your chest heaving. Your shirt is drenched in exertion sweat, and you spend a couple of minutes coughing heavily enough that a string of saliva and snot dribbles down to hang toward the ground. Your eyes are watering and your knuckles are white as you fight for your breathing back.

Funny, how this is the second time today that damned annoying dog has made you unable to breathe. 

You’re gonna fucking get him neutered .

You feel a soft hand press gently and hesitantly at your elbow, and blink through the tears while you turn your red, snotty, sweaty face toward the encroaching person. Standing there, beside you, looking moderately concerned, is the young Monster Ambassador, their head tilted up toward you and their lower lip pulled between their teeth. 

You scrub the ick from your face, hiccuping as you get your breath back, and they tug a purple handkerchief from one of their pockets and hold it out to you.

You , okay? They pseudo-sign, pointing at you and then making the okay hand shape, and tilting their head. You dry your eyes and cough a couple of more times, spitting phlegm that’s built up into the dirt, before you answer.

“Y-Yeah, I’m… I’m gonna live.” you wheeze, “D-Did you s-see a - a white - white dog? W-With a - a bra. Little thief sss... stole it.”

Their face lights up in two-part recognition, first looking you over excitedly before their eyes lock onto -

The bandana on your head?

You don’t have the chance to interpret their delighted signing toward you before you hear a loud yelp and a string of insults from somewhere else in the park, and the Monster Ambassador - Frisk, you tell yourself, their name is Frisk - grabs your arm and starts tugging you, stumbling, after them again.

Well... sure.

This might as well happen.

You wheeze and just try to keep up.