Chapter Text
Frisk’s feet hurt. They’d been walking for hours and the comfortable boots they had put on specifically for this trip didn’t help anymore and their feet hurt. And their legs too. And - (their chest. Their heart. Grandma.) - and they’re tired.
The mountain looms above them.
It’s not far anymore, it doesn’t look far anymore, but it hadn’t looked far an hour ago (they think it was an hour, they don’t know, they don’t have their cell phone or their clock) and it hadn’t looked that far when they had started to walk either. But it was. They really hope it won’t be much longer now that they’ve reached the foot of it.
They stop and tip their head back. The mountaintop is just barely visible against the orange sky, through the treetops. Frisk nods and fixes their eyes back on the ground, pushing forwards.
Frisk will climb Mount Ebott.
(And then?)
Frisk will reach the top of Mount Ebott.
(And then?)
And then Frisk will rest.
They will climb up to that peak and sit on top of the mountain and look down at the world. It’s gonna be all tiny below them, they’ll be able to see the city from there probably, and the people will all look like ants. It will be quiet and peaceful. They’ll watch the clouds and the sunset. And maybe then the pain will go away.
(And then? They don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. They will reach the mountain top.)
Frisk walks on, weaving through pines and the sparse underbrush of the forest. Their jeans keep getting snagged on twigs and other plants, leaving greenish-brown stains on them. It doesn’t matter. (It’s their favourite pair.) Nothing matters. They draw their shoulders up and pull the turtleneck of their striped sweater higher up their chin. They’re warm from moving, but where the chill March air hits their skin, it’s still cold.
(“Wear something warm when you go outside!” Grandma had always scolded them, pushing thick, self-knitted scarves and plush jackets onto them. “You’ll catch death outside like that!” She had always said that, over and over, and Frisk had sometimes listened and sometimes not. They hadn’t when they’d slipped away to look for their mom. They’d worn a different outfit than they’re wearing now, warm tights and shorts with suspenders, a crisp shirt with cufflinks and a cute pink bow for a tie, with a thick wooly cardigan thrown on top. Christmas gifts. They’d loved getting both cufflinks and the pink bow, it meant so much.
Just the right things for so important a visit.
Frisk had smiled the entire way on the bus and kept smiling as they walked down the street with the letter clutched in their hand, the address written on the envelope. They’d memorised the directions, they were good at memorising directions, so now all they had to do was find the right house.
The houses all looked so nice and big here. Frisk wondered why. Grandma had said that their mom was working for them, to pay for the apartment and the food and the clothes and so Frisk could be home-schooled, because grandma was already old and sometimes her legs hurt real bad, and so she couldn’t work anymore and their mom had to do it. But why couldn’t Frisk and Grandma live here too, if the houses were so nice and big? The apartment they lived in was nice too, of course, but not nice like that, with pretty decorations all over and everything so clean, and it was smaller too. Maybe their mom had recently gotten a better job, and now she had the house and was making it so Frisk and Grandma could move in?
They checked the address on the envelope again, suddenly nervous if they really, really got it right. But no, they were on the right street. They looked at the number of the house closest to them and their heart started pounding. Three more houses. They were almost there!
Frisk suddenly had to stop under the empty branches of a bush, reaching over the fence of the house next to them and making shadows on the sidewalk. They’d never seen their mom before, they’d seen some really old pictures Grandma had in a smelly old album, but those were almost as old as Frisk was and besides, pictures weren’t the same as seeing her for real. She’d looked pretty on the pictures. Would she look different now?
The clack of a door opening in front of them alerted them, making them flinch and lift their head and their eyes focus. Steps on a gravel path, somebody laughed. The gate to the garden of her house opened and -
She looked like them. Frisk felt the smile on their face, growing and growing, she looked like them. Like on the pictures but better because this was real. She was so pretty. Frisk’s mom was real and alive and she was so pretty. She’d half turned back towards the house, stretching her arm and hand back towards it, still laughing about something.
A small, blonde little girl followed her out of the gate, hair pulled into two cute little pigtails on the side of her head, and clutched her hand.
Frisk stared at the girl, stared and stared and stared because she looked like their mom too. But not like Frisk. Not like Frisk.
Their mom talked to the little girl and they beamed at each other and walked towards a car, and Frisk’s mom opened the door of the car and lifted the little girl up and kissed her on her face, all over until the girl giggled. Then she put the girl into the car and was busy there for a while, probably helping her buckle the seatbelt. A man walked out of the house and loaded bags into the trunk of the car before he got into the driver’s seat, saying something that made more laughter come from where their mom was bent over in the car. Frisk’s mom closed the back door and got into the front seat. They drove away.
Frisk still stood in the shadows of the bush, clutching the letter. They’d stopped smiling. Their mouth was open. They wished they hadn’t come here. They wished they didn’t understand.
Why?
Why?
Why why why why why why why why why why why why - )
It’s cold. Maybe they should have worn the cardigan. Or another warm jacket. They hadn’t been able to explain to Grandma why they didn’t want to wear those clothes anymore for a while. It had made her sad, and that had made Frisk feel bad so they wore them again. It hurt but seeing Grandma sad hurt more.
They look up at the sky again. There’s less orange now and more blue and purple. The sun is setting. So they won’t be able to watch it from the mountaintop after all, that’s a shame. Here in the forest the shadows are already dark and creepy. But they’re not on the top yet. They have to go on.
Frisk isn’t scared.
They used to be, when they were younger, but there had never been anything bad in the dark, it was always just a coat hanging at a door or socks piled up funny on the floor or a toy they’d forgotten to put away. Or sometimes it had been Grandma when she’d had to go pee at night. So eventually, Frisk had told themselves that being scared of the dark was silly and they’d stayed up an entire night to prove that they could look into the dark and not feel frightened. They’d gotten tired of it fast, because it turns out staying up in the dark means you can’t really do anything, because turning on the light to read would wake grandma and playing would make noises that would also wake Grandma and then Grandma would scold them. So they just sat and felt bored. But they wanted to make it and they did.
Because when Frisk wanted to do something, they always, always succeeded.
Grandma said Frisk was stubborn, but Frisk knows that it’s because they’re strong. They don’t ever give up and they don’t ever believe it when someone tells them they can’t do something. Somehow, giving up just feels wrong in a way they can’t explain. It’s just not them. And of course they can do anything, because when you never give up and you always try hard, try every possible solution and every impossible one too, you’ll eventually find a way to do something. They know that. They don’t know how they know it, but it’s true, they can feel it, deep inside of them.
So Frisk made it through that dark night. And they weren’t scared.
Which means they have no reason to be scared now, so they’re not.
They’re not.
It’s just a stupid dark forest with stupid dark trees and stupid empty branches that look like claws. The branches aren’t claws. That’s a stupid thing to think. And it’s also stupid to think that that tree looks weird, that it has a weird shape like a face in its bark. It’s not a face. There aren’t any lines there that look like wrinkles, a face that’s not a face anymore -
(“Grandma?” Frisk asked quietly, hovering in the door to her room. It was late in the morning, and she hadn’t gotten up yet. That didn’t happen often. And if it did, it was never this late.
Grandma still lay in her bed, a lump under the fluffy blanket which was drawn up halfway over her face like always. She liked to snuggle in. Frisk liked that too. The room was dark, the curtains still drawn, only a little bit of light getting past them. It was cool in the room, Grandma didn’t like putting the heating too high when she slept. Something smelled bad, sharp and bitter and foul. That was weird.
“Grandma, it’s past ten!”
She did not move.
“Grandma?”
Frisk hit the light switch and waited, but still nothing. They took a step into the room and stopped, what smelled so bad? It was coming from the bed. Was Grandma sick? Suddenly they felt worried. They couldn’t remember Grandma ever being sick like this before, even if her legs hurt sometimes. It had always been them who’d gotten a cold here and a light fever there, or who sometimes caught a stomach bug and had to throw up. Maybe they should call the doctor? But Grandma hadn’t done that, had she? She’d always asked Frisk what was wrong and then she’d made them tea and rubbed sticky medicine on their chest and put wet towels around their legs to cool them down or when they were throwing up, she let them and then gave them broth and water and bananas and toast and told them to drink a lot. Frisk didn’t know what to do. They decided to wake her and ask which of those was right.
They walked to the bed and pulled the blanket down, and Grandma’s face was stiff and purple and her skin tight, lips white and eyes sunk. It didn’t look much like her anymore.
Frisk screamed and stumbled away, the stench of urine and feces hitting them square in the face. They gagged and ran from the room, throwing the door shut behind them.
It wasn’t enough.
They dragged themselves to their room and hid under the blanket, shaking and crying into their arms. What was that? Why did Grandma look like that? Frisk hadn’t looked like that when they had been sick. And the smell - Once, Frisk was ashamed to think it, but once when they had a stomach bug, they couldn’t get to the toilet fast enough, and then there had been an accident. It was embarrassing. Was that what had happened to Grandma? But why was she all purple and stiff?
Frisk suddenly felt cold.
What if she wasn’t just sick?
What if -
No. No.
Frisk carefully lifted their blanket and stared at their door. It couldn’t be. Not Grandma. Not like this. It just couldn’t be. But what if? They had to check. They didn’t want to but they had to check. It was Grandma. If she was very sick they’d have to call the doctor and tell them what Grandma looked like so she could get the right medicine. And if she wasn’t just sick…
It was the scariest thing they’d ever done.
More scary now than before because now they knew what was coming.
The way to Grandma’s room felt like nothing else, it was worse than when they had gone to their mom’s house and seen the other child. Frisk felt sick. They didn’t want to go but they had to.
Frisk carefully opened the door and peeked back inside the room. The smell almost made them gag again, so they held their arm in front of their face and breathed into the crook of it. The smell of the fabric of their striped turtleneck sweater helped a little bit. They inched closer to the bed and braced themselves for the view, but it was still terrible.
They carefully extended a finger and poked Grandma on the cheek.
She felt cold and hard. She didn’t breathe.
Frisk had never owned a pet and had never seen death for real, but they knew what this meant. They began to cry again, heaving sobs into the crook of their arm, into the fabric of the sweater, still trying to protect themselves from the bad smell. They hadn’t known that people would go all purple when they died or that they would have white lips or that they would poop and pee themselves. Dead people on television didn’t look like that. They were always pale and stiff, but clean, maybe with blood over them if it was a murder story. Grandma hadn’t liked it when they watched those and always switched channels. Frisk thought that now, Grandma looked really bad. They hoped she didn’t suffer when she died. What if she did and that was why she looked like this? But even the murdered people on television hadn’t looked like this. Had they just been made to look prettier?
They moved their fingers to Grandmas hair, which was the only thing about her that still looked the same. It still felt the same, too. They carefully petted it.
Frisk didn’t know what to do now.
If somebody was sick, then you either gave them medicine or called a doctor. But who did they have to call for someone who died? Emergency? That was the only number they could think of. But what would they say?
Grandma was dead.
They didn’t want to say that. They wanted for Grandma to not be purple and white and stiff, smelling bad. Grandma shouldn’t be dead. She should wake up and be normal and make breakfast like she did on normal mornings.
Frisk was still crying, petting Grandma’s hair.
Where would they go now? They hadn’t told Grandma about the day where they took the letter and went to their mom’s house. She hadn’t ever told them where they should go if something happened to her. Would they have to go back to their mom? They didn’t want that. Their mom was… She’d went and had another kid - a cute little girl wearing dresses, not like Frisk who didn’t want to be anything and who wore things that people on the street sometimes said were strange. She’d never even come and seen Frisk and yet she went and had another kid and a man and she was happy.
So where would Frisk go?
In the fairy tales, the children always went into a forest or to a mountain when their parents didn’t want them. And then they’d find gold or someone else to be their family or both. Frisk didn’t really believe in things like that, they were just fairy tales after all. But still, that would be better than having to go to the mom who decided to have a better kid instead of them, wouldn’t it?
And there was a mountain, with a forest… Mount Ebott. They could see it out of the window, or they would be able to if the curtains weren’t drawn. Grandma had told them that it was really pretty there, but that people weren’t allowed to go there if they didn’t have experience with hiking and stuff, and that even those people had to stay on the paths. There had been accidents there in the past because people would go anyway and get hurt, but then a ski resort had opened on a different mountain that was just a short drive away, and so fewer people went.
That probably meant that there was nobody there, right?
So if Frisk went there… nobody would find them. Nobody would take them back to their mom. It wasn’t a fairy tale, but still better than reality.
“I’m going to Mount Ebott,” they said quietly through the lump in their throat. “I love you, Grandma.”
Grandma was stiff, and purple, and dead.
Frisk left her room and didn’t look back.)
No, on further reflection, the bark doesn’t look like Grandma’s face at all, not even when she was dead.
Frisk angrily wipes their eyes, blinking the other tears away that gather there. They’ve already cried. Grandma is dead. She won’t come back from crying, but crying will make it harder to see now that it’s dark so they can’t cry.
It’s really difficult to see anyway. They thought they’d get here faster when they started and that it would still be light out. They’d thought they could watch the sunset from the mountaintop. But now they can’t even see the path anymore. Are they even still on it? They don’t know. For a moment they feel insecure, but then they square their shoulders and the feeling is gone. They said they’d get to the top so they will. Who needs a path anyway, that’s probably just to scare little kids away. (Like them. They’re a little kid. They’re scared, it’s cold, Grandma is dead, they want to stop, they can’t stop.)
It’s getting harder and harder to walk. Not just because it’s dark, but the ground is also steep. They’re more climbing than walking by now and there’s rocks jutting out of the ground everywhere.
Overhead, they can see the stars coming out one by one.
Frisk blinks in surprise, there’s a lot more stars to see here than they’ve ever seen before.
Back at the apartment they’d sometimes watch the stars with Grandma, but they’d only ever seen the brightest ones. Finding all the constellations was hard like that.
But this, this looks like in the books, or on television, there are thousands of stars, more coming out every minute. It’s so beautiful that they forget everything else for a moment, mouth hanging open in wonder, stumbling slightly on the uneven ground.
That’s the last thing they do, stumbling.
Their feet catch in something, they don’t know what and then they’re falling forwards, bracing themselves with outstretched hands to meet the hard forest floor, but it never comes.
They fall into darkness, a deeper darkness than the darkness of the forest and they feel weightless and don’t know where up and down is, and they think they can maybe see the beautiful stars spinning past somewhere in the corners of their eyes but they can’t really make it out and the wind is whistling in their ears and there’s a weird pressure for a moment and their arms and legs are flailing -
The smell of something sweet -
Pain.
So much pain.
Darkness.