Chapter Text
Frisk collapsed. She had finally escaped that terrible place but now she was in another one. No, that would be a lie. Even though she was cold, hungry and lost, this forest was still better than that accursed household.
The Fredricks had adopted Frisk five years ago. She had been a naïve seventeen-year-old who had thought that having a family would make her life better back then. She had thought that they would accept her as one of their own, that’s what her friends said happened when you get adopted. And even if she didn’t like it there she could leave in a year since she would soon be turning eighteen. All of this had been nothing more than wishful thinking.
The reason that the Fredricks had adopted Frisk was that they saw an opportunity. She wasn't a child and was old enough to work. They had made her their maid and as their personal stress reliever. They had treated her as if she was nothing, a tool that they had bought and could easily replace at any moment. She had tried to leave when she turned eighteen but Mr Fredrick had stopped her. He had started calling her all sort of things. He had brought up how they had taken care of her for so long and how they had let her into their home. That by leaving she was spitting in their faces and that she was nothing more than an ungrateful bitch.
So in the end, Frisk had stayed. Mr Fredrick had tied her to the Fredricks' house with a chain of guilt. As more time passed she had got used to the work that would always be dumped on her by the parents and to the cruelty of the siblings. She had gotten used to sleeping on an old mattress and eating the same thing every day. She had gotten used to all of this and she had lived with it for three years after her eighteenth birthday. But nothing lasts forever, everything changed when the mother died.
She may have been a terrible person but, she had made sure that Frisk would be treated… decently. No one in the household had ever hit her, the most they would do is yell and belittle her. It had all been verbal abuse, soul pain, not body. But it had changed to both after the passing.
The father had begun drinking and would often just pass out in random places around the house. This left the brother and sister in full control. They were both older than Frisk and neither had ever treated her kindly. Before they would often trip her or play cruel tricks on her but when they gained control Frisk life went from terrible to tortures. They would beat her and find all kinds of different ways to abuse her. Frisk had many scars from all the times when the sister had wanted to "test her medical knowledge." The two would do this by re-enacting different injuries using Frisk. She would be the living dummy that the sister could use for practice. Frisk had regretted every decision she ever made on those days but, she wouldn’t leave.
She had been held back by the fact that if she left the father wouldn’t have anyone who would take her of him. After the mother’s death, he had become a broken man, a shell of himself. He had stopped making her do things and had started treating her kindly. It seemed that the loss of his wife had shocked him to the point where his mindset had changed from selfishness to selflessness. This sudden change in personality had been what stopped Frisk from leaving. But then the siblings did something that set the last nail into the coffin.
Frisk hadn't been bothering anyone, she was just cleaning the kitchen.
“Amelia is the top student in her class! Your help is really helping her with her studies, Frisk.” The brother had entered the room and was leaning against the counter watching Frisk clean. Frisk barely held herself back from voicing her opinion on Amelia’s studies and her contribution to them. “So you see, Amelia had gone over some complicated things…” He trailed off and Frisk was about to dash away thinking that he was going to try and grab her. The moment she stood up to try and get away from him a hand wrapped around her wrist. The sister had always had an iron grip.
“Good job, Samual! Now, Frisk, don't worry. This will be a quick procedure, just listen to big brother and sister.” The girl’s voice was sickly sweet. Frisk struggled but couldn’t escape. She knew what the sister meant by "quick procedure." They were going to re-enact an emergency on her. Little did she know just what her escape could have saved. That day the siblings had taken away something from her that she would forever miss.
They had wanted to see if the sister could treat a punctured eye. Frisk had cried and would have screamed but, they had gaged her because "it was so annoying to hear her overdramatize the situation." They had poked her left eye with a needle to imitate the injury. The sister had failed. But the two weren't content with the failure so, they tried again. Them standing over her with a needle and a first aid kit in hand was the last thing Frisk had seen. The two had left her alone only when they had no more eyes to practice on. She had cried. Every tear had stung. She couldn't take it anymore and when she heard the door to the siblings' room close she dashed out. She ran to the place where she thought the front door was and just hoped that she was correct. Luckily, she was able to find the door, once she was opened it and ran.
The Fredricks were a wealthy family and their house was kind of isolated. One side was flanked by a forest and the other was close to a road that led into the city. Frisk didn’t know which way was which. She just chose a direction and ran. She didn’t care about the fact that it was early December and that her clothes were in no way fit for this weather. She didn’t care about the fact that her shoes were already soaked through. She didn’t care about the fact that she didn’t know where she was going. She just ran. She ran in one direction and never turned. She only realized that she had run toward the forest when she had bumped into a rough surface, a tree trunk. The discovery didn't stop her, she pushed on. For her, she was surrounded by darkness and nothing else. But her other senses told her that she was surrounded by nature. She held her hands in front of her and stepped forward. Step, step, step, stop. Walk to the side to avoid the tree. Crunch, slosh, stop. Crunch, stop. Crunch, slosh, crunch, slosh, crunch. The rhythmic sloshing of her shoes and the crunch of the snow-filled Frisk with determination.
Now Frisk lay on the cold snow, seeing nothing but a void of darkness. She cursed the siblings in her head. She was definitely going to die out here and now she wouldn’t even be able to see the beauty that surrounded. Frisk's previous determination was fading but some remained. Those remains kept her alive and pushed her to try and stand up. She didn’t succeed but, the effort warmed her up a bit. She kept trying and was about to try again when she heard the sound of crunching snow. Someone or something was coming, she froze.
What if it were the siblings? Would they just drag her back to the house and continue torturing her? Fear quickly replaced her determination as the footsteps got closer. Her heart was racing. Her stomach was in knots. The sound was getting closer and closer, louder and louder. Then everything was quiet. Frisk couldn’t help but feel like this was just the calm before the storm, that she was standing in the eye of the hurricane.
A deep voice broke the silence. “You fucking lost or something?”
Sans had gone out for a walk in hopes of getting away from his thoughts. It had been a few months since his big argument with Papyrus. He had finally had enough of all the bullshit and decided to leave his asshole of a brother behind. Papyrus had always treated him poorly while Sans had done everything he could to protect his little brother. He had worked his metaphorical ass off to provide food and shelter for the little shit. The house that they had lived in for so long had been under Sans’ name! But the ungrateful brat had never returned even one favour. So, Sans had left.
He had left not only Snowdin but the whole Underground behind. The monsters had broken the barrier years ago. They could leave at any point but instead, they were trying to figure out the best way to fight the humans. HA! Asgore had been ‘preparing’ all the monsters for a brutal war against humanity for five years. He had gone on and on about how no monster can be out of shape and that this time there shouldn’t even be a chance of defeat. But Sans knew the truth. Asgore was just scared. He was nothing more than a cowering pussy. That was why the piece of trash they call a king had let Sans leave the Underground.
Sans had made himself a home near Mount Ebott, on the surface. He had almost cried—he would never admit that to anyone—when he saw the sky. The surface was just so beautiful and everything seemed to give off a heavenly glow. He wasn’t someone who cared about appearances but even he could enjoy the beauty of the surface world. He couldn't believe that Asgore had kept them away from this for five years.
He had settled into a small cabin that he found in a forest that surrounded the base of Mount Ebott. It had obviously been abandoned. Everything was covered in white cloth and spider webs were all over the place. It was the perfect home for him and he didn’t even bother cleaning the whole cabin. It had been troublesome enough to clean the kitchen and one of the bedrooms. Papyrus would’ve fainted if he ever saw this place. But Sans couldn't care less, that shit would never see this place.
Sans had relished and just enjoyed the isolation for the first month or so. But then he started to feel strange things. Sometimes it was as if the walls were moving in to crush him. Other times it felt like he was drowning in the silence. It had taken him another few weeks to recognize what these feelings meant. He was lonely. He had never thought that he would end up missing all the sick fucks that lived in the Underground but, the longer he spent alone in the cabin, the more he wanted to talk to someone. He tried to distract himself with some of the books that he had taken with him but, it had been to no avail.
He had left the house early in the morning hoping that a long walk could get things f his mind. Winter on the surface was very beautiful. Sans had ended up wondering for hours. He had wondered so far away from the cabin that he actually got lost. Although he could just take a shortcut home at any given moment, he still proceeded to walk around trying to find where his house was. It was an act of plain stupidity. But that idiocy was what had led him straight to the strange human girl lying face down on the snow-clad ground.
She was very small in size but he could see that she was an adult. Her brown hair had been messily cut and only reached her chin. She was wearing a striped sweater and brown shorts with leggings.
He had approached her out of curiosity. He had never seen any humans wonder through this forest. He had also noticed the red snow on which her head lay on. At first, he had thought she was dead but then he saw her shiver. He didn't feel bad for her. She was obviously an idiot since she was wearing clothes that were in no way fit for the cold. It was her fault that she had been stupid enough to leave the house like that. So he had just roughly asked.
“you fucking lost or something?” The girl's reaction was immediate. She grabbed some snow and threw it at him. She then tried to get up but immediately fell over, as if she was injured or something. She had been lucky and the snow had actually hit him in the face but he had no trouble wiping the snow away. He didn’t want any unnecessary attention so he got ready to shortcut away. But he stopped himself when he noticed something about the human that was very strange.
“what’s happened to your eyes? look like crap.” Her eyeballs seemed to be bleeding and they were filling up with blood. The girl shut her eyes and scrambled away from him. She bumped her back against a tree and he saw panic cross her face as she realized that she was trapped.
“Stay away! Just leave me be!” She brought her arms up to shield herself. She didn't seem to have any intentions to answer his question. Although, he would’ve thought that a human would have a bigger reaction at seeing a monster, especially a skeleton. Then it finally hit him, the bleeding eyes and all of that, she was blind. Whatever injury she sustained had blinded her. She didn’t see him.
Now, this gave him a couple of options. He could just shortcut away, leaving her panicked and confused. He could walk away which would calm her down and she would die in peace. He could kill her since she was defenceless free EXP. Or he could help her and save her from inedible death. The last option was one that past him would have scoffed at since only weaklings help each other but, after spending so much time alone his mindset had changed.
She would be a bother and a constant pain in the ass but at least he would have someone to talk to. She obviously wouldn’t survive in the cold for much longer. But was a good conversation worth the trouble? Who cares? If she turns out to be an asshole or found out that he’s a monster he could easily get rid of her.
Sans looked down at the girl and found her unconscious. She must have blacked out from the cold. Well, this made the task of getting her to the cabin easier. It also made him feel like both a hero and a villain. On one hand, he was saving her from the cold and on the other, he was practically kidnapping her. But again, why should he care? If she does anything that he doesn’t like he can easily get rid of her. She was just a temporary source of entertainment after all.