Chapter Text
When the knock comes, in three confident, decisive beats, Aliza freezes in her tracks to the laundry room, the basket of dirty sheets in her tiny hands. Sans is out in the back of the repurposed dog shed, busy with something, and Papyrus is off to a city council meeting again. So, Aliza tiptoes to the front door, peeking through the peephole.
Killer stands there on the porch, small, unassuming, grinning metaphorical ear to ear. A figure leans on his back. Three crates of food sit at his untied shoes.
Before the tar-eyed skeleton knocks again, Aliza opens the door, just a tiny crack. Killer smiles at her, leaning close to the gap.
"hello, sunshine," he says, voice warm enough to be charming instead of threatening. "your daddy home?"
Aliza nods, cautiously.
She knows Killer, maybe more than she should and definitely more than Sans would like. The Sans doppelganger swings by here and there, mostly to deliver the food that feeds the residents of this town, but just as often to drag Sans away for days on end. Sometimes, he stays overnight in Sans' room. Other times, he hangs around Aliza, teasing her, braiding her hair, talking circles around something the teenager cannot understand before laughing at Sans snapping at him for his inane chatter.
Killer has that energy, the type that her mother would tell her to stay far away from. Bright, outgoing, flirtatious, always pretending he has nothing underneath his too sharp smile. His usual company doesn't help either. No friend of Sans can be a scrupulous person.
But Killer is never mean to Aliza. So he's better than Sans in that regard.
She opens the door a little bit wider.
"thanks, kiddo," Killer croons, holding the door open with his toe as he looks inside the house. "i miss you a lot. good little children aren't common nowadays."
He kicks a crate towards the door, using it as a doorstop, then walks inside, shoes and all. Aliza scoots to the side, making way for the grinning skeleton and his companion.
Murder.
Shoulders hunched. Head down. Hood up. One arm around his chest. The other hand gripping Killer's jacket. His breathing is short, shallow. His body is shaking almost imperceptibly.
Aliza makes herself smaller, quieter, invisible to the clear danger in her view.
She remembers their first meeting, where Murder's eyelights zeroed in on her with unsettling intensity. She remembers the scrapes she gained afterwards, thankfully not as bad as the ones she'd received before. Still, she doesn't dare approach the hooded skeleton again — at least, not alone.
Murder drags himself to the living room couch and collapses like a folding house of cards. Aliza steps further back from the room, her back hitting Killer's chest. Startled, she swerves around, an apology ready on her tongue, only to stop when she realizes that Killer is holding something in his hand.
"for you." He wiggles it in his bony hand. "found it on one of the trips. looks like you, doesn't it?"
It's a felt doll with twin braids and a purple dress. The hair color is wrong — hers is a mousse brown, while the doll's is a bright yellow. Still, she reaches for it, her motions cautious, her eyes tracking Killer's projected moves. A few inches away from the doll, she snatches the doll in one quick move and hugs it close to her chest, slightly trembling.
Killer laughs, ruffling her hair, which makes her duck her head like a startled rabbit, but she doesn't pull away.
"where's your daddy-o, kid?" he asks, voice lilting in amusement. He always likes to call Sans that. It's strange.
"the fuck you just called me?" comes a voice from the kitchen doorway. Sans emerges, wiping something black off his fingers with an already stained rag. His bloodless eye strays from Killer to Aliza to the doll in her hands. "did you get her another toy again?"
"aw, come on, darling." Killer tilts his head. "children deserve enrichment, you know. and she's been a really good girl."
Sans glares. "you're spoiling her."
"you're starving her, more like," Killer grins, much to Sans' chagrin. The grumpy monster then spots Murder sprawling on the couch, face down, and his frown only deepens.
"again?"
"he's too cracked for the mission i'm going to. you know how it is: delicate negotiations and the like." Killer flicks a look at Sans. "take care of him, will you? i have the payment at the front door, if you want to see."
Sans makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like an aggravated growl, but he sullenly follows Killer to the front porch, not even sparing a glance at Aliza when he passes her. The teen scuttles to the side, perching on the staircase as the two adults steps outside of the house, their voices mingled with each other in the familiar dance of terseness and annoyance. Aliza waits for a couple of seconds, eyes shifting to the unmoving figure on the couch, then pads to the door, keeping to the shadows. She peeks through the gap, face pressed to the scratched wooden door, ears perking up.
Click, goes the sound of the lighter in Killer's hand. Sans leans down to catch the flame with the tip of the cigarette in his mouth. Both of them lounge against the porch rail, shoulder to shoulder. Sans exhales a cloud of smoke, and Killer chuckles next to him.
"so, is this enough for your trouble then?" he asks, voice weirdly playful.
"you keep dragging him to my place," Sans grumbles. "you're lucky i'm not that pissed at you."
"he's a stray, and you're good at dealing with them."
Sans scoffs. "since when?"
"since liz."
Aliza, eavesdropping, squeezes the doll closer to her chest. Sans squints his eye at Killer.
"that's different."
Killer smirks, swiping the cigarette from Sans' hand and taking a drag. "sure, darling. keep telling yourself that. just saying, single dads are so in vogue right now."
Sans flips the other off, but he doesn't snatch his cigarette back. "fuck you, you prick."
"aw, i love you too, sansy." Killer puts the cigarette back in Sans' mouth, fingers flirting near the latter's teeth. "you're cute when you're mad."
Sans bites on the stick, startling a laugh out of Killer. Glaring, he speaks, "your tastes are horrendous."
Killer's smile only curves higher as he leans closer to Sans. "yeah, as if you didn't kiss bunny with that mouth of yours too."
Sensing this is going somewhere that she definitely doesn't want to know, Aliza backs away from the door and resumes picking up her laundry basket. She still has chores to do around the house. And if she can hide away from the three volatile monsters here, then it's even better.
Yet, she can't deny that the doll held tight in her hand is giving him some small sliver of comfort. Despite being a murderer — it's even in his name — Killer is surprisingly gentle to her, more than any monster in this Underground even. Also, he's more knowledgeable about human biology than Sans or Papyrus can ever be, which is why Aliza sometimes goes to him for questions and advice. The tar-eyed skeleton can be unsettling, but at least he's not a liar.
Aliza's feet slow as she walks. The laundry is, unfortunately enough, next to the kitchen, the latter connected to the living room where Murder is lying across the couch, one arm hanging off the side, shoes still on, tracking snow all over. His chest, pressed against the couch in his prone position, rises and falls unevenly. A barrage of mutters flow from his throat.
Aliza edges as far away from the couch as possible. She remembers what happened last time she spooked him, something she hopes won't happen again.
The floorboards under her feet creak.
Murder jolts, fingers twitching, but his eyelids still close. Aliza freezes, not daring to make another move.
"… too loud…" Murder mumbles, almost too unintelligible to make out. The bickering from outside the porch trickles in from behind the door. Murder's face tightens, as if fighting against a nightmare in his sleep.
Maybe he is. Sans tells her Murder has quite plenty. That's why he keeps making noises at night without fail.
Aliza should leave him be. She should go do her laundry and forget about this. But, another part of her seems to have a different idea. She places the laundry basket down and, one by one, pulls out the sheets in the basket, looking over to see which blankets are the cleanest in the bunch.
Quietly, she steps up to Murder, blankets in arms as she stands over the sleeping monster. Then, carefully, she drapes a sherpa one over his shivering form. Then, another. It's quite cold outside, and they have abysmal heating here. Clumsily, she smooths out the covers over him, snugging the edges so he stays warm.
Murder doesn't react, his body dropping still. Aliza stays quiet, not even releasing a breath as she quickly steps away from the couch. Her heart pounds erratically in her chest, but the sight of Murder — sunken-eyed, grim-mouthed — relaxing his shoulders, if only for a little, fills her with a tranquility she hasn't felt before. He looks young. Younger than her mother is, who had her at an unfortunate age.
Aliza doesn't know what to do with that thought.
So she goes back to her chores, a series of predictable, safe tasks. She loads the washing machine, letting the low, groaning churring of the old machine washing out the turbulent thoughts in her mind. It's easy — almost too easy — to pretend this is nothing but another foster home that she only temporarily occupies until she eventually runs away, just like the others too.
The snippets of the people living here will inevitably be washed away from her mind one day, if she ever lives to that day.
Killer's laugh and Sans' irritated grumble echoes from the hallway. Two criminals, horrible people, speaking too easily about impossible things.
Aliza stays locked in the laundry room, watching the machine spin, pretending this world makes any sense once again.