Chapter Text
You clutch at the baggy green and yellow jumper Toriel gave you, one of Asriel's spares that Toriel gave you. You suppose that you should be calling them your brother and mother now, but it still feels weird, wearing this jumper is weird. Not as weird as the atmosphere though, the strange cloudy feeling you felt ever since you fell down, which has gotten stronger now that you're here. You've been ignoring it for the most part, maybe when this whole situation gets less awkward, you'll ask someone about it and hopefully it's nothing.
You have been trying to get to know them better ever since you were adopted, about a week ago. But they've been so busy unpacking and settling in to their new home, that you haven't been able to learn anything.
Right now, Toriel is unpacking stuff in her and Asgore's bedroom, you could ask her about some of their stuff, maybe find out something about them. But what if you bring up something emotional and sad by accident? No Frisk, you said you would stop thinking like that. Maybe it's better to just not think about it and hope you learn about them through time. They do want you to rest, it's been a rough month for you.
You just decide to look around at your room. On either side of the room, is your bed on the left, and Asriel's bed on the right, with a dresser and shelves in the middle. A shelf lines the upper wall of the room, ready to hold sentimental things and old toys probably. At the foot of his bed, the toy chest, still full of generic building blocks and a toy train, among other things. At the foot of yours, is his pair of big plush... things.
This is boring, I really need to do something before I go crazy. You eventually decide to help Toriel anyways.
You peek in, and see several boxes strewn about the mostly empty room, with goat-mom sitting at one of them. You knock on the open door. “Oh, Frisk, did you come to help with the unpacking?”
You only offer a strong silence, before entering.
“I am afraid I do not have much left to unpack, but you can help with what is left.”
She's right, only a few of the boxes still have stuff left in them. You sit at a still full box labeled “memories”, and open the top flaps, uncovering scrap books, stacked up flat. The top one is ongoing, which you place on the right of an empty shelf in the bookcase. The next one reads “2000 to 2010”, you flick through, spotting a couple with Asgore and Toriel acting cute together. Another photo shows them holding a trophy, you can't see the plaque, but you believe it's a first-place, you see it on top of the dresser. You see one with them standing next to a turtle dressed in what is either ceremonial, or really old, armor, and a skeleton with what looks like a wolf skull or something. You flick through the rest, noting a pregnancy before lots of cute photos of Asriel, before deciding to stop.
You continue placing the books in order on the shelf, and note the strange range of years. You do a double-take. These go back to the 1400s!!! The books have wider and wider ranges of years, going up to 100 years. You look at the last one, decorated with preserved leaves – very preserved – and open it. The most decorated photo shows a young-adult goat monster dressed casually, and very tall. He's holding a bouquet of buttercups, with his other arm around a shorter girl goat monster, who is grinning like an idiot, covered in leaves, like she just jumped into a leaf pile.
The most notable thing about this photo isn't the monsters however, nor is it the alleged year it was taken, compared to when colored cameras were invented, nor was it how casually they had dressed, it was how the sunlight was shining through the autumn leaves... the sunlight.
You freeze up when you fell a breath on your back. Toriel is looking over your shoulder at the album in your hands, a sad expression on her face. I knew it, I've opened up an old wound, and I didn't even have to say anything.
She takes the book, her mind stuck in memories of the past. You quickly walk out and start to wander the castle.
You lose yourself easily in the halls, wandering down one corridor to the next, running into the occasional library or spare bedroom. The walls, although gold colored, aren't actually made of gold, but are just stone bricks painted a gold color – you suppose it would be kinda silly if it was made of actual gold. The pillars that divide the hallways into thirds are colored the same, with perfectly smooth – but rounded – bricks.
Briefly checking your surroundings, you find a row of windows that look out towards the Great Lake, as Asgore has taken to calling it, not big enough to be an ocean, but it was – in fact – great. The crystals in the roof, highlighting the rocks near the ceiling, make it impossible to see where you were standing on the other side, like it was the perfect hiding spot.
Not wanting to spend too much time alone, you keep moving, and it's not long before you run into what is clearly a throne room. A big throne, colored gold like the walls, with plush red cushions, like the carpet leading up to it. The throne is off-center, with a smaller throne beside it. You can't see anyone in the room, at least not from the doorway. Slowly moving inside, you call out. “Asgore? Are you here?” No answer.
You start forward, looking around the room for any defining details, but the room is hardly decorated, only having just been built. Soon enough you run out of things to look at, and you stop in the middle of the room. You go to turn around, but you hear light footsteps slowly make its way toward you.
You freeze up, they don't say anything, just keeping a creepy silence. They slow to a stop behind you, and whisper in a quiet voice, “Turn around, and shake my hand.”
Not wanting to be on the creepy stalker's bad side, you slowly turn on the spot, and grip the monster's hand. After a few firm shakes, you look down in your hand, and see an ordinary stick of gum, which is decidedly not licorice-flavored. “Want some gum?”
Looking up, you see a skeleton who is hardly any taller than you, with teeth somehow curved up into a slight grin, and with white dots in his eye sockets. He's wearing a lab coat and black pants.
“Was just wandering because you looked lost.”
“Um, I was just looking...”
“What's your name kid?” He interrupts.
“Uh, Frisk?” You respond.
“And where'd you come from?”
“I sorta, fell down here, and they took me in.”
He looks surprised, “Really? They did, did they?”
You freeze, you just remembered something. The other monsters might not actually like you, not after the war, you were lucky about the Dreemurrs, but this is the first time you really got introduced to another monster.
So when Asgore shows up and distracts him, you take the opportunity to sneak away.
You never really think about the kind of impact you have on people, especially when it comes to who – or what – you are. Just by being there, you can make a difference. I would not have stuck around for this long if it wasn't for the little prince, the fluffy angel that I can now call a brother.
It still feels weird though, he might be your brother by name, and you might know about him enough to claim to really know him as a person, but there is still a long way to go before it really feels right. But maybe you don't need anything to do, maybe you don't need to help in order to bond. Maybe bonding can happen just by being together.
You never were good at gardening, but that doesn't mean you can't watch Asriel do some. He always did seem fine just being with you, so what's the point trying to actually do something with him? Then again, it might be a monster thing, after all...
Aren't buttercups supposed to be a weed?
And yet, there he is, planting a plot of buttercups around a tree sapling. Deciding that watching him from afar for so long is creepy, you walk up to him, and sit next to him. He only smiles at you, then starts watering the yellow garden again. You suppose this is nice. Despite the apparent lack of over-world animals, you can hear an ambient chirping from above.
You look up at the mammoth cave's roof, where small holes apparently provide soft light, a yellowish bluish color, which seems to stay the same regardless of weather. It's getting dark, you're already see some glowing crystals breaking through the filtered day-light.
You wander if anyone is up there, if they even notice that there are holes in the ground, or even if they care about where they go if they do. Are there even any humans that remember monsters actually exsisted. Do they know about the war?
Does Asriel?
I mean, humans are probably the monsters' version of monsters, are you his beastly friend? It might be like a fairy-tale, where one kid tries to convince everyone else that they're not bad. Would that happen? Would there be monsters still with a grudge?
I don't want him to think of me that way, as just “the good one”. I mean, that's not totally untrue, humans are known to wage war for no real reason. War for the sake of war, that's what human history has been like. But I don't want Asriel to think that I might one day... turn.
“Azzy? What do you think of humans?”
“What do you mean?” He says, confused.
“I mean... how do you feel about them?”
“Well, I wouldn't know, I've only met you.”
“But, haven't you heard about... the... you know?”
He puts his watering can down for a moment and looks at you, “Frisk, the war was hundreds of years ago, and I've never seen what humans are like personally, how am I supposed to judge a species by ancient history?”
Wow, that was surprisingly... mature of him. His judgment seems to be better than most humans you know. How much do you bet he didn't learn that from somewhere? It's actually unbelievable how innocent he is. You guess that there's no reason to feel weird about it after all, he probably already thinks of you as a sister. You clutch at the baggy green and yellow jumper, it feels comfortable, why wouldn't it?
It used to belong to your brother.