Chapter Text
The human kid woke up.
It had been two days since the she first arrived in the Underground. She had spent the first night at the home of the Ruins’ Caretaker. It was an unusual experience to meet a kind woman who also wanted to mother her. Even when the child recklessly traveled through most of the Ruins by herself instead of waiting for Toriel to return from her errands, Toriel took the blame on herself instead of pushing it onto the human.
She wasn’t used to that kind of experience from caretaking adults.
Toriel’s concerns weren’t unfounded, either. At the time, the child could’ve sworn that she died on the way to the motherly goat’s house, but wondered if maybe she’d just imagined the whole thing.
Whatever the case, she was determined to find her brother, and she wasn’t about to let anything get in the way. However, that meant that she couldn’t limit her search to the Ruins.
If her brother had stayed here, she would’ve found him by now.
It hurt to leave. Toriel had been kind to her. But the human child had to leave to continue her search.
The second night had been spent at the home of a friendly, energetic skeleton named Papyrus. She had been planning to visit Snowed Inn again, but after the fight with the fierce captain of the Royal Guard — that simply was not something she could recover from with a mere two-minute nap — Papyrus offered her to sleep at his house.
Both nights that the human slept, she dreamed about her brother. When she woke up, she would initially feel down, missing him sorely, but soon those feelings would be overtaken by feeling well rested with a refreshed resolve.
She was going to find her brother.
…
This morning, that resolve crumbled into the worst kind of uncertainty. Undyne, the fierce captain, had seemed awfully bent on killing her the night before. As a matter of fact, it was while facing Undyne that the human realized that she wasn’t actually imagining her own death, but was retconning it.
Despite that, and as disastrous as her later cooking lesson turned out to be, the human came to discover that Undyne had a heart of gold. With a little help from Papyrus, the kid was able to connect with a side of Undyne that she’d never have suspected to exist.
However, if the fact that Papyrus never mentioned a different human was anything to go by, he had never met her brother. That meant Papyrus would not have been able to help him befriend Undyne. Still, the child figured that Undyne hadn’t killed her brother, because in her speech, Undyne had said that the sixth human was never found. On the other hand, the Underground environment had its own host of hazards that could’ve killed her brother while he was on the run.
The thought that she was going to discover that he died filled her with dread.
“ARE YOU ALRIGHT, HUMAN?”
Papyrus’ voice seemingly came out of nowhere, yanking the kid back into the present.
She nodded, weakly.
“ARE YOU SURE? BECAUSE YOU DON’T LOOK ALRIGHT. BUT DON’T WORRY. YOU CAN COUNT ON ME. FOR I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, CAN ALWAYS HELP YOU RETURN TO A GOOD MOOD.”
“I…”
She had no idea what to say. She knew what her problem was. But she had no idea how to talk about it. Plus, Undyne was also in the room — she was visiting Papyrus after her catastrophic cooking lesson. She wouldn’t be pleased to realize that the human she’d spent some three years hunting was the same human her new friend was looking for.
She figured out something to say. It didn’t seem like it was good enough, but she tried to force it out anyway.
“I heard… another human… came here… do you… know?”
“AH! THERE HAVE BEEN SIX SO FAR! THE LAST ONE WAS FIRST SIGHTED THREE YEARS AGO, BUT THERE CURRENTLY ISN’T MUCH KNOWN ABOUT THEM. I HAVE, HOWEVER HEARD PASSING RUMORS ABOUT WHERE THEY MAY BE HIDING!”
Rumors about where he may be hiding. That much was a good sign.
“why do you ask? you come looking for one?” Papyrus’ brother Sans, who lived there as well, joined in with a question of his own.
The kid could only nod.
Undyne chimed in. “Well, if that’s the case, your best place to look would probably be the Dunes. That’s where most of the rumors point. Most of the Guard has given up on the hunt, and even I’ve slowed down. They’ve all gone with a different rumor, that whatever happened to the human before must’ve happened to this one, whatever it was, and that a human soul is bound to show up eventually.”
A human soul. That last part left the kid feeling cold.
“…Point is,” Undyne continued, more gently, “there is an unusually good chance that your friend or whoever is still alive.”
On that note, the child realized that, rather than bitter news like she was starting to fear, she still had a chance of learning that the answer was sweet. The hope filled her with determination.
The kid asked for directions to the Dunes, and after receiving them and preparing for the rest of the day with breakfast and brushing her hair, she set off for the sands, hoping to find her brother.