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Six jars full of starlight. The lids are unscrewed one by one, the contents tipped out into the crevice where so many children had experienced their first and final fall. A few words are said—in memory, in mourning—and the starlight returns home.
The first child to rise does so gradually. He thinks it is a dream at first, and so he keeps his eyes shut, waiting for the dream to lead him where it will. But the dream does not end, and finally, he opens his eyes, and climbs out of his coffin.
He wanders, as he’d wandered once before. He keeps his eyes peeled, watching, gradually piecing together the mystery.
He is not where he fell. He remembers where he fell. There were leaves the colour of autumn and a house that smelt of butterscotch and cinnamon. There was an enormous blinking eye, watching as he bit his lip and endured blow after blow, waiting for his chance to strike, using the toy knife he'd had and long since lost, a chance that never came. As he fell, he said I’m sorry to the woman in the ruins who’d sent him out to play while she prepared a surprise.
There is no life here, he finds. When he steps out of the house and into the silent city, he sees the streets are empty. The city is a ghost, his footsteps the only echo. He wonders: if he wandered far enough, would he return to those ruins? Would he find that smiling woman who had welcomed him so warmly? Is it possible that she’s still there?
But he doesn’t know how much time has passed, and there’s no one he can ask. Perhaps it’s been a thousand years. Perhaps even longer. It doesn’t feel as though he’s changed, but he was dead, and now he is alive. So he must have changed. Right?
He thinks about the town he left behind, a town that wasn’t silent at all. Over the years, life there has surely carried on. Children would have gone to school; adults would have gone to work. Nothing would have changed without him. Nothing had changed with him. And now, here, there is a city waiting for him, watchful and unmoving, where nothing will continue to change.
He thinks about the town he left behind. He thinks that maybe he feels something like relief. If you are alone, there is no one you can disappoint.
He wanders until he finds a house, a house that holds no colour and smells only of dust. But although it’s not a home, it still has beds and food and furniture, and so he decides to wait, in this quiet sanctuary that has everything he’ll ever need.
The second child to rise awakens in a fog, but she forces her way through, stumbling until she knows that she can walk. Although her legs are shaking, she still forces herself forward, and when she appears before the boy, she’s standing as tall as she is able, trying to convey the strength she knows that she possesses, even thought it frightens her at times.
“What is this place?” she asks, before hello or even who are you?
The boy shrugs. His expression is a placid one, and he blinks languidly as he looks her over. He doesn’t look at all surprised to see her, even though she’s certain that she’s never seen him in her life.
“Were you dead too?” he asks. He’s sitting at the table of a small, cold kitchen, wearing blue pajamas as he picks away at a bowl of dry cereal. His feet are bare. His hair is mussed. She wonders if he’s maybe still half-asleep.
But then—
“Oh,” she chokes, and her hands fly to her chest.
Were you dead too? he’d asked, and in that moment, she remembers. Fields of white beneath a dark stone sky, silently placing her gloves in an empty box. We must see, the woman had said. If you can defend yourself. Just to make sure you will be safe. But she had struck the woman, had seen her fade and flicker as gleaming dust had come away on her hands. It is fine, the woman had said with a smile. This means that you are strong enough. But as she’d lain there in those snowfields, choking on frost, warmth bleeding from her through her chest, the last thing she had seen had been the look of pain in that woman’s eyes.
“Did you know Toriel?” she asks.
The boy nods.
“Is she here?”
A shake of his head. “As far as I know, she’s still in the ruins. I don’t know how to get back there.”
“She doesn’t know,” the girl says. “She doesn’t know what happened. I have to tell her that I’m…” Dead? Alive? Sorry? “I have to go.”
The boy doesn’t say don’t go or good luck; he merely shrugs and resumes eating.
She doesn’t leave immediately. There are preparations to be made. Food, clothing, emergency supplies. The boy shows her the first aid kit that he found, pressing bandages into her hand. She chooses clothing from a child-sized wardrobe she finds in one of the bedrooms: sweaters, heavy pants, woollen socks. She won’t go cold again.
“You knew Toriel,” she says before she leaves, backpack heavy on her shoulders. “Should I…tell her anything? Pass on any messages?”
The boy is still in his pajamas, dark circles underneath his eyes. He blinks slowly, looking almost like he hasn’t heard.
At last he says, “Tell her I’m sorry I missed the surprise.”
The girl nods and gives the boy a solemn thumbs up. With a sleepy smile, he gives her one in return.
The third child’s awakening should be graceful, as is everything ze does, but instead ze comes to life spluttering and gasping from the memory of water. Ze is cold when ze awakens, but as the pounding of zir heart begins to ease, ze finds zir clothes are dry, although zir tutu is missing and ze has to step onto the cold tile without shoes. The water was just a dream.
A boy is waiting for zir, sitting cross-legged by the door. He only opens his eyes when ze’s standing right before him.
“You were expecting me,” ze says. “What’s going on?”
“You probably died,” he says. “Someone else who died woke up a few days ago. I’ve been waiting here to see if anybody else would.” A long, slow blink. “I guess you did.”
“Someone else?” ze repeats, and ze looks behind zir, seeing for the first time the neat row of coffins lined up behind zir.
Coffins. You probably died.
And like a bolt of lightning, ze remembers. Turning back in that bioluminescent cave with the waterfall, trying to escape pursuers from all sides, tossing aside zir ballet slippers so that ze wouldn’t slip, the sound of voices closing in, thinking I already fell once before making that final leap.
But zir body is not a twisted corpse. That means ze has a second chance at freedom.
“You’re welcome to stay,” the boy says later as ze’s rummaging for shoes. The only pair ze can find that ze can fit is a pair of hiking boots, large and clumsy and not at all what ze would wear if ze had a choice. I suppose I don’t, ze thinks as ze ties the laces.
“Thank you, but no,” ze answers as ze stands, straightening zir clothing, patting down zir hair. It’s still pinned up, thank goodness; ze won’t have to fuss with it too much. “I’m going to find somewhere else to go. I’m not staying here. There’s a chance they’ll come back.”
Better to die than be used, ze thinks. And if you can’t stay dead, run.
The Underground is empty, the boy had said. Ze hadn’t believed him, but ze finds that he was right as ze ventures out into the city. All that follows zir is zir own footsteps; loud, distasteful, thumping things that they are. Even so, ze walks with precision, doing zir best to stay alert.
If there are any monsters left, then let them come and find me, ze thinks fiercely. I won’t give up this time.
But what ze finds is not a monster. Instead, ze finds a human. A tall, thick girl with dark curly hair, who practically runs towards zir from the very moment their eyes meet across a bridge.
Ze quickly steps back, raising zir hands defensively. As the girl comes to a halt, ze demands, “Who are you?”
“I’m a human too!” the unknown child says with foolish eagerness, pressing her hands to her chest as if to say it’s me! I’m the human! “I thought it was just me and the pajama kid! Did you only just wake up?”
“The pajama kid?” ze repeats, and ze lowers zir arms ever so slightly. “Are you the ‘someone else’ he mentioned?”
The girl is still smiling. She takes a step forward, and ze realizes her smile is almost timid despite her size. Only then does ze let zirself relax, lowering zir arms completely.
“I’m actually on my way back,” the girl says, smile faltering somewhat. “I wasn’t sure where else to go. The ruins are empty. Did…did you want to…”
“I won’t go back with you to that house,” ze interrupts. “I’m leaving.”
The girl wilts.
“But I’m going somewhere else first,” ze adds, and the girl immediately perks up. “You can come with me if you want. It’s probably safer if we travel together.”
“Yeah, no problem!” the girl says. Her grin widens, revealing a gap-toothed smile, and she gives zir a thumbs up. “I can be your bodyguard! I’m really tough. Where are you going?”
“The blue cave,” ze answers, thinking of a pair of slippers tossed carelessly aside in the heat of the moment. If ze’s going to find a way out, then ze will need to be able to move the way ze is accustomed to. Ze won’t settle for anything else. “And for the record, I’m tough too.”
The girl laughs as she takes zir hand. “Then you can protect me,” she says, and before ze can reply, the girl has turned around and is leading zir across the bridge.
She guides zir through the paths of steam and crumbling orange rock, finally leading zir down to a river where a boat is waiting. Ze could question it, could point out how suspicious it is that such a perfect mode of transportation should already be waiting for them, but the girl is already taking her hand and helping zir into the boat.
Ze accepts. Ze kneels carefully, with grace, as perfectly as ze does everything, before saying, “Let’s go.”
The fourth child to awaken takes careful note of everything they can before they even think to open their eyes. They’re lying on a hard, flat surface; that is the first clue that something’s wrong. The air is stale; that is the second clue. The third and final clue is that they are alive, when before they had most certainly been dead. They may not remember much of being dead, but they doubt that there are many ways to survive being run through with a trident.
The world swims when they open their eyes. They cringe, pressing a hand against their temples, but they climb out of the coffin regardless. Glasses are a luxury, one they’ve had to go without before. They can go without again if necessary.
They manage to stumble a few steps towards a pale shape by the door, but then the pale shape rises and a strange voice says “Hello.”
The child yelps.
By the time they’re somewhere else, sitting upon something soft and eating a cold chocolate bar that had been pressed into their hands by a shape that had hugged them hard enough to nearly crack their ribs, they’re calm enough to say, “The dead children are coming back to life.”
“Uh-huh,” confirms the pale shape, although they know by now that he’s actually a boy, not simply a monster who’d been lying in wait for them. There are two others as well— the strong girl who’d brought them chocolate, and a sharp, imposing figure who watches their every movement carefully. The strong girl chastises zir for this, but they don’t mind. They can understand wanting to be wary.
“How many are left?” they ask.
“Two,” the pale boy answers sleepily. They think they hear him yawning, although they can’t see for sure. “Unless there are more than just those coffins.”
“There shouldn’t be,” they say. Even without their notebook to refer to, this is information they have memorized. “The monsters thought they needed seven souls to break the barrier, and they seemed pretty desperate. Stockpiling them would serve no purpose.”
“But the Underground is empty now,” the strong girl points out. “Ze and I checked everywhere. Either the barrier broke after all, or something happened.”
Something, the child thinks. Something like a grand disaster. Catastrophe, calamity, tragedy. But those words all carry a certain connotation, and—would that really be something to mourn, if all monsters were wiped out?
In their memory, the child sees the blurry image of a crowd of soldiers clad in armour, closing in on them, trapping them, all while a beast with strangely-coloured eyes sat upon his throne and watched.
They lift their hand to their face—a nervous gesture. But they have no glasses to adjust, and so lower their hand once more.
Despite what they remember—fear, terror, panic—they cannot bring themselves to say no.
“Perhaps a miracle occurred,” they say at last. “Perhaps…the barrier simply broke one day. It’s not impossible.”
Based on what little of magic they had managed to learn while still alive, it’s very much impossible.
The fifth child to awaken is roused as one might rouse a heavy sleeper: with a hand upon his shoulder, gently shaking him awake, as a parent might a child.
“What do you remember?” asks the squinting child who awakens him, but the boy is dazed and can’t reply. Instead, he clasps the child’s hand, and with a drowsy smile says “It’s very nice to meet you.”
Although he is the one who’s just awakened, it’s the boy who helps the other child. They cannot seem to see, stumbling and walking with their hands outstretched, feeling for the walls and stairs, until at last the boy asks, “Would you like some help?”
The two of them are walking arm-in-arm when they finally reach the kitchen that has become the headquarters of the fallen children. It’s in there the other three are waiting, gathered around a small square wooden table. There’s a boy whose face is thin and wan, who seems to be drooping in on himself, a girl whose face is soft and round, who holds herself like someone much, much smaller than she really is, and a child whose face is angular and sharp, who holds their head higher than the rest.
They have questions, all of them, questions like what do you remember? and do you know what happened to the monsters? But the boy can’t answer any of them, can only shake his head and think back longingly to the frying pan he’d found and lost. He’s hungry, he’s beginning to realize, but the only food to be found in the entire kitchen is cold and canned and dried.
If he’d truly been asleep before, then he’d have liked to have been able to wake up and make breakfast for everyone. Eggs, maybe, the way he used to before school, back when his mother was too tired to get up. That he can’t does something strange to him, makes his stomach twist and sink simultaneously. No matter how strange the circumstances, one can always cope if they can follow their routine, but now even that’s been taken from him.
At last the children ask a question he can answer.
“Do you know what happened with the barrier?” asks the sharp child, the one dressed like a dancer.
“No, but I saw it,” he replies.
All the nervous fidgeting and rustling around the table comes to a halt.
“I never saw the barrier at all,” says the strong girl, sounding awed. “You really made it that far?”
“I did,” the boy says, nodding. He closes his own eyes, trying to remember. “I was caught, and they brought me to the monster king.”
The monster king, the armour-clad beast with the strange-coloured eyes. And yet the beast had seemed sad, somehow, and…
“I asked him what his favourite food was,” the boy says, opening his eyes. “I thought if I could make it, then we could be friends. I thought that maybe it would cheer him up.”
Something in him screams at the memory. But despite the memory of being torn apart soon afterwards, he bears no scars. Ergo, he is healed, and so he keeps a smile on his face as he looks out at the others.
They have all grown somber, save for the squinting child who had first awakened him. This child leans forward, expression intent.
“You know where the barrier is,” they say, and the boy nods.
They follow him through the hallways, through the garden, through the dark and twisting corridors. Towards the place that was his end, all while the other children follow, five in all. The strong one and the sharp one hold each other’s hands, and the one clad in pajamas trails along behind, but the squinting child clings to the boy’s arm as tightly as a vine. The boy does his best to not act too relieved.
But at the end, when the boy comes to a sudden stop, the squinting child drops his hand. They step forward, arms outstretched, feeling for something the boy already knows they won’t find.
He knows, because he’s seen it, seen that wall of warping, twisting light. He’s seen it, and it’s no longer there.
The barrier is gone.
What does it mean, the children whisper to each other.
All of them know the stories. They know why they were killed, one by one, without mercy. Yet their numbers are one short, and still the barrier is gone. So what does it mean? How did the Underground go empty? What has left it so lifeless and grey?
All of them have known oblivion in some way or another. It’s nothing new to them. But if this is an aftermath, it’s one that holds no clues whatsoever of whatever came before.
They stand before the shattered barrier a long, long time.
None want to take that first step forward, because there is a question that none of them will ask.
If the monsters who have killed them have gone free, then what will be waiting for them on the surface?
“There’s one coffin left,” the boy in the pajamas says at last. “If they were last, then maybe they know something.”
A last resort. But it’s all they have.
The children meet each other’s eyes and nod.
(But of course the last coffin was not truly the last.)
(They know this, and yet they don’t know this. They remember thorns and colour and everything breaking, but brush it off as just a dream.)
(In this timeline, as far as they’re aware, the last coffin is the last.)
The sixth child awakens with a start.
“You’re alive,” she chokes, even before the others introduce themselves. Then, like a bewildered afterthought: “I’m alive?”
“We’re all alive,” a soft-spoken boy says kindly. “The barrier is broken. All of us can leave together.”
“That son of a bitch,” says the girl, and she’s already pulling herself upright. The other five instinctively step back as she claws her way out of the coffin. “That son of a bitch.”
“What’s wrong?” asks the soft boy who had greeted her, sounding baffled. “All of us are fine.”
“We are not fine!” she snarls. “I’m in a goddamn coffin!”
A tall girl flinches, and a child with a narrow face steps forward protectively. The sixth child halts. In her anger, she lost herself. She may be justified in that anger, but she can’t forgive herself for scaring an innocent. She forces herself to calm, breathing slowly and deeply, almost meditatively. At last she says, “I’m sorry for snapping.”
“Who’s the 'son of a bitch?'” asks a child with a squint, one who’s clinging to the arm of the soft boy.
“You don’t know?” asks the girl. She turns to face the child, hands planted firmly on her hips, a scowl written on her face. “The king, Asgore. He’s the one who did this to us.” And she gestures towards the row of coffins.
“Not me,” says the narrow-faced child tersely. “I did it to myself. I didn’t let them catch me.”
“Well, they did,” the girl shoots back. “Unless death addled my brains enough to make me forget basic math, there are six coffins and six of us. That means they got you! They got all of us, and used us!”
“We don’t know if that’s what happened,” interrupts the child on the soft boy’s arm. They’re hunching forward, squinting, brown hair hanging in their eyes. Of all the children there, they look to be the frailest, like they might splinter if so much as looked at wrong. Even so, the girl scoffs, crossing her arms and glaring at them.
“It’s obvious, ain’t it?” she demands. “Toriel told me there was only one way to break the barrier, and that Asgore was killing kids to do it. If the barrier is broken, that means he—”
“Toriel!” the girl who’d flinched interrupts. Any fear she might have felt has evidently been forgotten. “You knew Toriel?”
She sounds so foolishly hopeful that the sixth child softens despite herself.
“Yeah, I knew her,” she replies, turning to the other girl, who looks to be on the verge of wagging a non-existent tail. “She found me when I fell. She told me about what happened to you kids, too. She was real broken up about it. That’s why—”
She stops. She looks away. She can’t do it, can’t say that’s why I left, that’s why I took him on, that’s why I died.
Shame is sinking in. Shame that she’d ever thought herself big enough to take anybody on. She may be all fire, all self-righteous fury, but she’s still a child, one who’s never killed before. All it had taken was a split-second of hesitation in the face of a monster to fall a second time.
(She of all people should have known better.)
“He can’t get away with it,” she says at last, voice trembling. “It’s not right. People can’t be allowed to get away with these things. And if the barrier is broken, then that means he did. It’s not—” her voice cracks slightly.“It’s not fair.”
As her shoulders begin to shake, the other girl steps forward, gently wrapping her arms around her. And one by one, the other children follow.
As they step over the boundary line, the six of them are holding hands.
The sun is rising as they emerge from the Underground, pushing its way over the horizon and casting a golden light upon the mountain. Far, far away, there is a city. Not dead and white like the city underground, but grey and illuminated by the distant promise of city lights.
“Everything looks so normal,” says the boy in the pajamas. He thinks, here is the proof, then. The world carried on without me. I can remain hidden.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” says the tall girl. She thinks, then they are still alive. The Underground is empty and the world has carried on unchanged. Everyone might be okay.
“We won’t find out here,” says the dancer. Ze thinks, I didn’t fall twice so that I could stay trapped. One way or another, I’m getting out.
“There should be a bus stop nearby,” says the child with a squint. They think only of the immediate, the practical and pragmatic. In theory, buses operate on fairly rigid schedules: the quickest way to find out whether society has collapsed or not would be to wait for the bus and see what follows.
“I’ll go with you,” says the soft boy. He doesn’t know where he himself will go, not when there is nothing left for him. It seems most practical to follow someone else, and here is somebody who needs him, if only as a guide.
The girl with the braids says nothing, but she thinks, if monsters left the Underground, then he might still be out there. I might still have a chance to make things right.
But then she glances back at the five children standing with her, and she knows there is no point.
They’re alive, all of them. To seek vengeance now would not be just.
She lets her hand fall upon her empty holster and sighs. She doesn’t have a weapon anymore, anyway. All she has is that dried-up lucky charm in her pocket, and a fat lot of good that’s done her.
But maybe that’s unfair, she thinks, once again glancing back at the others.
They’re strangers to her, all of them. She only knows them from Toriel’s stories and from what little she’s observed since waking up. But they all look almost hopeful, despite the shit she knows they must have gone through.
Somehow, that’s enough to make her want to start feeling a bit more hopeful herself.
This may not have been the ending any of them expected, but it’s a chance for a new beginning. They have been reborn, every one of them, and that’s definitely a kind of luck, she decides.
When she turns back to the rising sun, she’s almost smiling as well.
(Not quite. But close.)
The boy in the pajamas decides to stay behind. There’s no room for him on the surface, he says, and the others nod, shrug, say they understand, but that they have places to be, things to try and figure out. That’s alright, he says. He’d rather be alone. But secretly, others are already making plans to later come and visit, to make sure he’s okay and save him if he’s not. He is as much a near-stranger to them as the others are, but they cannot leave him behind, not entirely.
The places that the others want to go aren’t the same. There are families to find and families to avoid, and even though there’s still the bus stop to track down together—even without anyone explicitly acknowledging it—they know this is an ending of sorts, to a story that had only ever half begun.
They have no numbers or addresses to exchange, no tokens to bestow upon each other. They only have one thing they can give, and so they do so.
They tell one another their names, and then they separate.
Six jars full of starlight. The lids were unscrewed one by one, the contents tipped out into the crevice where so many children had experienced their first and final fall. A few words were said—in memory, in mourning—and the starlight returned home.
And now, with six young souls having at last reawakened, six children begin to look for homes as well.