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Undyne sees your scars. You hadn't meant for her to see, no one was supposed to see, but somewhere between the flames from the MTT brand oven leaping up the drywall and your frenzied escape out the hole Papyrus left in the window (because somehow, in the HEAT of the moment, you forgot that the door was still perfectly functional), the sleeve of your sweater caught fire.
You were just gearing up for a heavy session of Stop-drop-and-role, the teachings of your elementary school's visit to the local fire station still clear in your mind, when Undyne notices the additional flame burning up the woollen fibres of your beloved sweater. She yells in shock, and catches you by the collar before you can hit the ground. In one swift motion, she's pulled the garment up, off, and over your head and slammed it into the nearest pool of water, shouting like she's entered into a professional tennis match.
You wonder if monsters have tennis.
You make a mental note to ask them.
Unfortunately, all thoughts of cross-cultural sports exchanges are pushed to the back of your mind as a warm breeze, heavy with soot, drifts over Undyne's front garden, brushing against the dark hairs and stinging flesh on your arm and suddenly reminding you that you are standing, out in the open, in front of someone, in front of a friend, in nothing but your vest.
You clutch your arms self-consciously, running a thumb over the raised skin. Thin lines, faded pink in places, a fresher, more recent red in others, and some lines that aren't thin at all but gnarled and wide, scratched open by four blunt fingernails.
You wince and glance up at Undyne who is staring at you with a peculiar expression on her face. She doesn't look upset. She almost looks…. Curious?
“Hey, kid. What are these supposed to be?” She picks up your arm to peer closer and you stamp down the urge to yank it away. “Do all humans have these?”
You look away and shake your head, failing to meet her eyes.
“Are they stripes? Do humans get stripes? Are you some kind of stripy human?”
Once again, you shake your head. You don't understand why she doesn't get it- but then, monsters don't bleed, do they? How would she ever know what you'd done to yourself if she didn't know what healed wounds on humans looked like.
Undyne cackles and you only just contain your flinch. You're losing your edge. “I mean,” she begins, “They almost look like battle scars, but humans must have some super weird weapons, I mean look at these! Why would you fight someone's arms? Also, you're like six-”
Disgruntled, you hold up ten fingers and she scoffs, brushing your hands away.
“-Or ten, whatever. The point is, no one battles a kid unless the cause is Noble and Just. There's no way you've been in enough battles to get this many scars.”
You begin to shake your head, begin to reassure her that you're not some secret great human child warrior. You pause.
You open your mouth.
You smile.
You lie.
Undyne won't stop talking about how badass the tiny human child is, to have fought so many battles at such a young age. You feel the weight of your sins crawling on your back, but you shove the guilty feeling down somewhere deep inside your soul to examine at a later date. For the moment you have friends, and those friends think you are Super Cool. It doesn't really matter if you lie, in the end.
You had almost forgotten about the battle scar lie. You escaped the underground. You escaped and you came back for everyone else and now everyone is free and living in the surface world. You have a job as an ambassador and it's simultaneously super difficult yet much less stressful than you expected. Monsters don't fit in by any means, but they're generally well-liked. Apparently, they chose the perfect year to rise from the Underground because everything had already been so bizarre in the past surface months that a lost civilization of magical creatures emerging from the ground seemed like the next logical step.
You wouldn't know. You never paid much attention to world affairs, you're ten,but you've made an effort recently. It's part of your job now.
You are, however, still expected to go to school but since it's Toriel's new monster-human school it doesn't seem so bad.
It's at school where Undyne corners you.
Perhaps corners is the wrong word- which is rare for Undyne, since most of the interactions she has with anyone seem to involve cornering in some way or another. It's just who she is. Instead, she approaches you with a mere fraction of her usual boisterousness. It puts you on edge.
“Frisk!” she calls out as you're heading past the bike sheds. She's at your side in a flash and smiling at you far too wide. “Have a seat!” She says and plants herself down on the mossy tarmac, leaning back into the bushes.
You stare at her in confusion, but before you can make the decision to join her she's dragging you down onto the ground beside her by the hem of your sweater.
“So!” She begins, and you can see she's sweating. She hasn't stopped smiling. “Here's a completely hypothetical question for my bestest best friend ever, I hope you can help me out here, I really need your advice.”
You blink up at her curiously.
“Say- completely hypothetically- you found out that your bestest best friend had lied to you about something super important- what would you do?”
Instantly, the tiny box deep in your soul labelled “Dirty, guilty liar.” pops open and you feel your body fill with dread. Not trusting your words you give a helpless shrug.
“Only- it's really funny- except, you know, really not funny, but we all had to do a looooad of teacher training before the humans let us open up this school- even for teaching gym! As if they think I'm not qualified to teach measly human children how to be strong! I've been doing this kind of thing my whole life-” She stops herself mid-sentence and takes a deep breath. “Anyway. We just had another one of those training things- wanna guess what this one was about?”
You shake your head stiffly and stare down at the ground, refusing to meet Undyne's gaze. She's angry, she's angry, she's angry, she hates you now, you never should have lied to her. But if you hadn't- if you hadn't…
Unconsciously, your blunt fingernails scrabble at your arms through your sweater, reaching for something, some crevice to tear apart, anything to make the anxious knot in your stomach disappear. Suddenly, blue hands come to rest on top of your brown ones and Undyne is in front of you, holding your hands to her chest and wearing an expression softer than you've ever seen on her.
“It was about self harm, Frisk.”
You feel your eyes fill with tears and your hands start to shake.
“I mean- it wasn't just about self harm, obviously, that would be super depressing- it was about lots of things! It was about mental illness and something about the “Rights of the Child”- and I was right! Human children aren't allowed to battle, you know, so we'd have a problem even if you were telling the truth.”
You try to control your breathing, but it's becoming difficult. The tiniest of sobs escapes your mouth but thankfully, Undyne, caught mid-monologue, doesn't seem to hear it.
“There's all kind of special laws about human children- although I don't know why most of them are laws, they seem a lot like common sense to me! Still, the lady said it's really important. She said because we're teachers we always have to be able to recognise signs of… abuse… in children...” Undyne trails off and stares at you. You're crying openly now, and you desperately pull your hands away from hers, hiding your eyes behind your clenched fists.
“I'm sorry...” You whisper, through hiccuping sobs, “I shouldn't have lied, I'm sorry, I-”
You don't get to finish your sentence because suddenly you're being pulled forward into a warm, scaly hug. Undyne clutches you against her just slightly too tightly, as if you're going to float away. Her hair is in your face and she smells like seaweed. Somehow, it's perfect.
When she finally pulls away she frowns at you, thoughtfully. Her fingers move carefully around your face, fixing your messed up hair and wiping a tear away from your cheek. She doesn't have anything for your running nose and so ignores it and you decide not to tell her that you accidentally smeared snot on the shoulder of her shirt.
“Listen kid,” She begins at last and you feel your nervous heart beat faster despite yourself, “You don't need to lie to me. About anything. We're besties, and I don't know what that means to you, but to me that means we don't keep secrets like this. Did you think I would get angry or something? I mean, I'm a pretty angry person, I know, and maybe I would have gotten angry if I'd known back then, who knows? But I don't want you to lie to me. You don't have to do that. I don't think there's a single thing you could do that would stop us from being besties!”
Hesitantly, she takes your hands in hers and carefully rolls back the sleeve of your sweater. She looks down at the jagged pink lines and traces a careful finger over them, a pained expression on her face.
“Frisk… I don't know what your life was like before you fell into the Underground… Maybe you did end up fighting actual battles, or-” She glances down at your arms, “Maybe a different kind of battle, I don't know- and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to! But I want you to know that you've got the coolest team of monsters ever seen on your side now, and we all love you. We love you to pieces, kid. You don't have to deal with this stuff on your own anymore, okay? Next time you feel like you need to fight a battle against yourself, talk to us. Okay? You have to talk to us.”
You're crying again, but it's a different kind of crying. It's like breathing again after being trapped underwater for years, or collapsing onto a bed at the end of a long day. It's liberating and you find yourself reaching out for Undyne once more, smiling into a tearful hug.
“Jeeze, are you trying to drown me?” Undyne laughs, and you file away the question of whether or not she can actually breathe underwater for later use.
Undyne picks you up and settles you against her hip as if you were a much smaller child. You feel bad for a moment about making her carry you, before reminding yourself that Undyne is strong. Undyne can handle it- and what's the point in having a super strong best friend if you don't let yourself be carried now and again?
For the first time in you-can't-remember-how-long, you allow yourself to rely on someone else's support.