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It seems that ever since you fell into the ruins, you’ve gained a new friend.
“You should stop at the Spider Bakesale,” the voice that’s been in your head ever since you landed in that patch of yellow flowers– Greed, as the other child calls himself– tells you as you round the corner after sparing the weepy ghost, Napstablook. “Trust me, you’ll wanna try the donuts.”
You kick at a pile of red, crunchy leaves and scrunch up your nose, a little wary of food “made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders!” but you can’t deny how hungry you are.
You’re exhausted too, tired from all of the puzzle solving and trying to figure your way out of the battles with the monsters that you encounter in these crumbling, stone halls, but you think it’s worth it to send these creatures– these Froggits and Whimsuns– on their way, safe, and happier than they were before you met them, even if the fighting still leaves you a little anxious.
“Why don’t you buy something, and take a rest?” Greed suggests calmly, like he’s talking to a small child, and you can’t help but feel a bit indignant. You’re almost ten. “We still have a long way to go until we reach mo– Toriel’s house.”
You raise an eyebrow as a quizzical grin spreads over your lips. If you didn’t know any better, you would think that Greed was about to call Toriel “mom,” the same way you did when talking on the phone with her earlier.
You’re about to open your mouth and say something when Greed cuts you off.
“Look, just get a stupid donut, okay?!”
You’re amused by Greed’s reaction (this is the first time you’ve really seen– or rather, heard– him lose his composure) but you concede anyway, walking up to the web and sticking seven pieces of your hard-earned gold into the sticky strands.
Immediately, and almost cheerfully, some spiders crawl down and hand you a purple donut with a web iced on it in white frosting, and you can’t help but take a bite of it right then and there. It’s sweet, like the candy you found earlier in the ruins, and you take a moment to enjoy your snack as you rest against a wall. You even buy a jug of spider cider, but you decide to save it for later, when you’ll really need it.
“Are you ready to keep goin’, or do you need some more time?” Greed asks.
You push off against the wall, only wincing a little at the sting in your bandaged wrist– which Greed definitely notices– and venture even deeper into the ruins
—
Already, you miss Toriel.
You miss her warm, cozy little house with its roaring fireplace and nice, comfortable beds. You miss her butterscotch-cinnamon pie, the way the scent of sweets and spice seemed to fill the air and cling to her fur. You even miss her snail facts.
The Snowdin forest is far too dark and cold, the harsh winds biting at you through your striped jumper and chilling you down to the bone as you trudge through the snow and slush on the ground. You’re freezing, and you feel sick to your stomach over leaving Toriel on such bad terms. She isn’t even picking up her cell phone now when you try to call.
At the very least, Sans and Papyrus are a blast, and you still have Greed.
“Just stay calm, kid,” Greed says, like he isn’t the same age as you (you think, anyways.) “You’re almost to town.”
It takes a while longer than you’d like, but Greed is right. Eventually, you reach a charming, little town that’s all decked out, cheery and bright, for the holidays, and is full of peaceful monsters. There’s a quaint, tiny shop where you stock up on cinnamon buns, an inn next door, and they even have a library.
You check in to the inn, grateful to flop down onto a comfy bed. Every bone in your body aches from the long trek and the cold, and you’ve gotten pretty banged up from battle, as evident by the small scratches on your face and hands. You’re tired and hungry again (maybe you should’ve eaten that spaghetti earlier?), and your wet clothes stick to your body uncomfortably, but there’s nothing you can do about that.
Even your bandage has gotten wet.
Greed seems to peek out of your subconscious, examining the problem at hand.
“Why don’t you swap that old thing out for that ribbon you found, or that bandana you bought at the shop?” Greed asks, and you shift anxiously on the edge of the bed.
“I… need the bandage,” you say, your voice soft in the quiet of the room, and it’s almost like you can feel Greed raising an eyebrow.
“Why? It’s not all that good for defense, and it’s healing isn’t worth all that much either. You’d be safer wearing something else,” Greed reasons.
You know he’s right, but you can’t bring yourself to take off the ratty, old bandage. Not in front of Greed.
Your anxiety must be clear, because Greed concedes easily.
“Okay, you can keep it on, just… be extra careful when you fight, okay?”
You nod and lay back on the bed before sinking into a deep sleep where you dream of Toriel– and two other goat monsters you’ve never met before, but who feel so heartbreakingly familiar– and a warm, loving home.
—
Waterfall would be absolutely lovely were it not for the knight mercilessly hunting you down to kill you.
You’re running, and running, and running, feet slipping on the marshy ground and water splashing up to your ankles, your heart pounding in your chest and your breath coming ragged and hard. You think you’ve lost her a while back, but you need to be sure that you’re safe. You absolutely cannot let her catch you.
Greed is quiet for now, but you can feel his fear as well as your own, sharp like a knife between your ribs, twisting and stabbing into your lungs. The reminder that it isn’t only your life on the line (Is Greed even alive? Who exactly is he?) is jarring enough that you stumble and fall, scraping your knees on the small, blue, glowing rocks in the ground.
“Oh, crap,” Greed panics, voice shaky as if he’s the one that’s been running. “Are you okay? C’mon, get up, kid, please-”
You scramble upright, hissing out a sharp breath as you take in the sight of your bloody legs and feel the sting of the injuries.
“Oh, crap.”
It’s not too bad– you’ve suffered worse injuries from falling off your bike and play-fighting with Lan Fan despite Fu constantly telling the two of you not to do that. This is nothing, really. She broke your arm one time.
(She cried and apologized a lot, and you had to wear a neon yellow cast for months. It hadn’t been a very fun day.)
But you’re alone and tired and so, so afraid that it doesn't surprise you when you feel the hot sting of tears pricking at the corners of your eyes.
“Oh, no,” Greed stammers as you start to cry into your hands, tears tracking down your dirt-stained face and falling onto the ground. “Oh, no, please don’t cry! C’mon, I’m beggin’ you here. It’s okay, it’ll all be okay, I promise, just-”
But things are so not okay.
You’re fully sobbing now, and the faint sense of panic that’s been buried beneath your skin since you first fell underground is now clawing its way to the surface.
You should’ve never left Toriel. You should’ve never climbed Mt. Ebott in the first place! You grew up hearing the legends, that any who climb the mountain will never return, but you did it anyway. It was stupid and reckless and suicidal, and– and– and now you’re in big trouble, and you can’t even manage to run for your life right.
“Ling, please,” Greed tries again. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was an accident, it–”
Guilt gnaws at your empty stomach, and realization settles over Greed, heavy as a boulder.
You aren’t sure what’s worse: his pity or the strange sense of kinship that he seems to feel at the idea.
Quietly, Greed takes control.
It’s strange, to feel yourself taking a backseat in your own body, but you’re so exhausted that you don’t even fight it, just recede into the background with a sniffle.
Slowly, Greed gets up from the ground and limps the two of you over to the edge of a river that glows a sparkling blue and is so clean that you can see right to the bottom of it. He reaches in your pocket, and pulls out the unused bandana, which he dips into the calm water.
You only have a moment to wonder what he’s doing before he begins to gingerly dab at your wounds, carefully cleaning up the blood and grime from your scrapes.
The sudden care startles you enough that your cries begin to subside, dying off into quiet hiccups and gasps for breath.
“W-What are you doing?” you stutter, voice shaky and rough, and Greed hushes you softly.
“I’m cleaning us up while you take a break. You seem like you could use one.”
“W-We can’t though! Undyne– she’ll catch us! She’ll–”
Greed hushes you again before rolling up your sleeve.
You go still as your bandage, blood-stained and worn, is slowly revealed, along with the other pink scars littering your arm.
Once again, there’s a wave of sadness coming from Greed, but he doesn’t say anything other than a gentle, “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re alright.”
You wince as Greed unwinds the bandage from around your arm, and dips it into the cool water of the river in a meager attempt to wash some of the blood away. Then he wrings the bandage out, dabs up the tiny beads of fresh blood welling up from your cuts, and wraps you back up anew.
He doesn’t say anything about your injuries, but you can sense something in the wordlessness, can glimpse flashes of untrimmed nails dug so deep into skin that it bruises and breaks, and a feeling of pure sorrow so powerful that it takes your breath away.
Oh.
Greed didn’t fall on accident, either, did he?
“It’s okay,” Greed hums again. “We’re gonna be okay.”
You let yourself recede further back into your shared vessel, and cry until you can’t anymore.
—
Finally, things begin to take a turn for the cheerier when you get to Hotland.
Undyne still probably wants to kill you, despite the fact that you saved her life, but at least she isn’t chasing you anymore. Papyrus even suggests that all of you should hang out together sometime, maybe at her house, but you think you’ll let Undyne cool off a bit more before you feel bold enough to take him up on that offer.
Dr. Alphys is weird, but not in a way that spells immediate danger for you. Her opinions on anime leave much to be desired according to Greed, but she’s kind of sweet in a nerdy way, and she even offers to help guide you to the Core!
And then, there’s the robot Mettaton, who you can’t for the life of you understand Greed’s infatuation with.
“He’s just… a box?” you say as you make your way through Hotland.
True to its name, this part of the underground is scorching, and leaves you all hot and sweaty in your suddenly too-thick jumper. You wish you would’ve spent more time in the air conditioning of Alphys’ lab, or that you had grabbed a glass of water for yourself when you had the chance, but at least you have Greed to distract you from the heat with conversation.
“No, you don’t get it!” he protests in your head, sounding far too passionate about this. “He’s charming and charismatic and funny and–”
“He would’ve killed us if Alphys hadn’t been helping us in that stupid quiz!”
“But he didn’t!”
You snort out a startled laugh, the events in Waterfall not forgotten, but at the very least receding into the background, and you and Greed continue onward, the King’s home and the end of your journey drawing ever nearer.
—
You do end up doubling back to hang out with Undyne, which is just as eventful as you’d previously imagined, but– miraculously– ends with the two of you becoming friends! And then you journey further into Hotland, where you meet Muffet the spider, who nearly kills you (you’re really getting sick of people doing that), continue to deal with Mettaton’s schemes (who you can feel yourself developing a fondness for, much to Greed’s amusement), and buy a cowboy hat from a dumpster.
Things take a turn after you battle Mettaton in the Core though, when Alphys reveals that she was… playing you? Just pretending?... this whole time, and that there is no way for you to leave the Barrier without killing Asgore.
You’re deathly silent as you board the elevator at the end of the hall, a sense of dread looming over you that even Greed feels.
Things only get more unsettling as the elevator doors open and you enter an entirely empty city, gray and dull and lifeless, and make your way to… Toriel’s house?
Greed is quiet. He’s so uncharacteristically quiet in the back of your head, and there’s an anxious churning of your stomach that you know didn’t originate from you.
“Greed?” you try, but you’re met with silence.
So you walk on, into the familiar little house, but… it’s different, somehow. Gone is the spicy, sweet smell of baked goods, the warmth of the fire in the hearth, and the gentle sense of comfort. Instead, everything is gray and still, dust motes floating through the light coming in from the windows and a musty smell lingering in the air.
It’s different, but it also feels so strongly familiar that it makes your heart ache in your chest.
You look inward again to Greed, and are puzzled by all of the complicated feelings coming from him: nostalgia, sadness, an underlying current of panic that you don’t understand.
“Greed?” you try again. “What’s wrong?”
Still nothing.
You walk into the empty living room, feeling more than a little hesitant, and jump as you encounter a Froggit. You didn’t think there was anyone else here.
You get ready to ACT, fully prepared to go through the familiar motions of sparing the creature, but instead, the Froggit opens its wide mouth and speaks, beginning to tell you a long tale of a fallen child…
—
Slowly, as you tip-toe around the house and onwards into the rest of the abandoned city, the puzzle pieces start to come together.
The fallen child, the abandoned toys and sweater in the bedroom– along with an old, heart-shaped locket and a worn dagger– and the King’s family.
You pass by a mirror, turning everything over in your head, your mind racing as you poke and prod at Greed’s presence, waiting for any kind of response, and stare deep into the dusty, reflective surface.
You look older somehow, or maybe just more tired. There are deep shadows under your eyes, and you’re looking a little thin, despite how well you’ve been eating down here. Your hair is a mess, your clothes are rumpled, the stitches and threads coming loose, and you’re covered in scrapes and bruises, angry and red against your pale skin. You hardly even look like yourself, but maybe you aren’t entirely yourself, not anymore.
But Greed seems to disagree.
“Despite everything, it’s still you.”
It’s the first thing he’s said since you stepped into the lonesome house, and it catches you off guard, your breath catching in your throat and a feeling of relief spreading through you that Greed is okay.
And maybe… just maybe, that’s the crux of the whole thing.
You are still you, but you’re Greed now, too, the boundary between the two of you growing thinner with every second the two of you spend together. You’re shifting and changing, becoming more like Greed– or maybe he’s becoming more like you– or– well, whatever.
You’re one now.
The two of you are cut from the same cloth, one and the same. More than that, you… care about Greed, and you think he cares about you as well. You can feel the rush of affection, of fond exasperation, that sometimes courses through him when the two of you are talking, or you ACT silly in battle, or you fail another puzzle and begin to pout. And you’ve also felt the cold fear that crawls up Greed’s spine when you take a particularly hard hit in battle, or even worse, you– reset? Is that the proper term?
It can’t just mean nothing.
There’s a weird feeling in your hand, like someone is grabbing and squeezing it, the pressure just the right amount of comforting. Greed, you think.
You remember to take a deep breath, and then ask, voice quiet and small in the still air. “We’re okay, right?”
Greed still seems uneasy, but it eases up momentarily as you and him… hold hands?
“We’re… gonna be okay.”
“Do you miss them?” you ask.
Greed is silent for a long moment before nodding, a thick feeling growing in your throat.
“Yeah.”
“They don’t know that you’re… here.”
“No, they don’t.”
There’s a sharp pang in your heart.
Focusing as hard as you can, you try to squeeze Greed’s hand back, but instead just end up clenching your fist. You frown. You don’t know how he did that.
It gets the job done at least. You can feel Greed’s spirits brighten a little, and a small smile finds its way onto your own face.
“We’re gonna be okay,” you repeat firmly.
—
Finally– Finally– you’ve reached the barrier between the underground and the surface.
You’re nervous as you stand at Asgore’s side, and the memories that flash through Greed’s head of a large hand petting his head and big arms picking him up in hugs do little to ease your mind as you look sideways to the huge trident in Asgore’s paw.
Alphys had said only one of you can live through this encounter.
But all of the kindness you’ve acted on, all of the creatures you’ve already spared, can’t have all been for nothing.
You’re ready.
And with Greed with you, your souls nestled tightly against one and other, you know you can do this.
You just have to stay determined.