aiko's otter den

yellow as a real star - You are not a hero, yet here you are with a happy ending. Or, Rachel, and the aftermath with the monsters.

---

5. V

The parlor feels too small, with the sheer amount of killing intent in it filling the airspace. Rachel sidles next to Kris, who looks as unnerved as she feels. “You good,” she says under her breath. She doesn’t touch him, she knows better than to think he won’t bite.

“Fuck no,” they reply. “What the fuck have you gotten me into, girlie?”

“Some bullshit,” Rachel admits. “Sorry about that.” Arlene’s eyes flick onto her with that perfect, natural smile. Rachel makes herself smile back.

“Long as that guy doesn’t skewer my ass alive, it’s fine, I guess.” Kris slouches into the nearest chair. “Think we can get some empanadas on the way outta here?”

“Probably.” She has to admire their pluck in the face of the King and Queen of the Monsters looming over their de facto guardian.

To be fair, it’s more Asgore doing the towering. Toriel just stands there, expression taut with fury. The other monsters are also on edge. Alphys isn’t in the room because she’s frantically typing on her customized laptop. Undyne hovers by the door, magic groaning around her fingers. Papyrus is also absent, probably with Asriel. She doesn’t want to imagine Arlene and Asriel in the same room ever, let alone how she’d break poor earnest Papyrus.

Arlene doesn’t even get up from her chair, infuriatingly. She sips her tea, like they’re bugs or something equally intrusive. “I hope you remember how pointless this is.”

“You have so much LOVE, I almost want to try anyway,” says Toriel with an unfamiliar venom. “You’ve gotten older, Arlene Grace, but you’ve gotten no better.”

Arlene snorts. “My brothers needed me then. I’m free of them now.” Free of them, fucking hysterical. Rachel didn’t even know that Arlene had family outside of her dead husband.

“And all the worse for it,” Toriel snaps, fire burning at her claws.

Asgore clears his throat. “What did you tell Frisk?”

Arlene leans back to look at him, unimpressed. “What on earth would I have to tell Violet? The child had the key. The door was where you couldn’t reach it. Anyone could find the way… well, anyone with the qualifications.” She gestures to Kris, who stiffens. “They could do it, if they were desperate enough.”

“Why can’t Rachel?” Toriel asks. For a moment, Rachel wonders if Toriel wants her to go, but a look in those kind, burning brown eyes makes her reconsider. She doesn’t want Rachel to try, but she wants her to fail even less.

Arlene snorts. “As if she could gain LOVE with her own hands.”

Bam could. Bam would. The point was Bam gaining LOVE for her, since he was incapable of love, so she’d been told. He could have done it and been perfect to tear the tower apart and not have the same consequences that she would have.

Surely kind people climbed the tower. And kind people could find the capacity to hurt others. Surely Bam could hurt others too if he wanted.

Toriel rears back. “You are a parent,” she spits. “You want your child to become a LOVE-fueled abomination, and for what? You’re back here with the rest of us. You could have raised th—”

“I’d take you seriously,” Arlene interrupts, steady, hawk eyes. “If you had even been capable of burning us alive. You looked at us as little ones and felt sorry for us. You let us do as we liked. LOVE, violence, pain, you come here seeking my guilt, my repentance. I have none. Not for the monster I raised from a human body, not for the things I threw away, and not from the conquest. I have my stars back and all my loved things gone and soon the head of the false idol will burn and I’ll be free. You left the king alive out of pity. If you want to hate anyone, hate your fear of LOVE before spitting on me, Hellfire Queen.”

Rachel thinks she’s going to throw up for a different reason.

Toriel’s muzzle twists with horror and anger. The room would probably melt and kill them all if she and Kris weren’t in it.

The sense of Undyne’s spears is growing stronger. A chill runs up her spine.

“Why are you still so close to the mountain?”

Asgore’s even voice snaps Rachel from watching Arlene, who is rocking in her chair like an eager child.

“Oh?” Arlene hums. “Why do you ask? I want to see the end.”

“If you wanted that, you’d have never left the caves.” Asgore’s mouth stretches into a fanged scowl. “Will you die if you leave the area?”

“Naturally.”

The room freezes. She admitted it. How could she admit it? What was she not afraid of?

“So if we drag you outta here,” Undyne starts. “And just keep goin… and goin’, you’ll eventually kick the bucket and not cause any problems anymore.”

“Something like that, yes,” Arlene agrees, perfectly cheerful. “But I don’t recommend trying that. I could turn you to dust with a cough if I wanted to.”

Kris tenses up beside her and Rachel thinks of hours with books on her head for posture and takes their arm. Their eyes fall on her and she nods.

They don’t relax exactly, but a smile softens the sharp upset in their face.

“Stand down, Undyne,” Asgore orders. The order sounds physically painful. “She’s right. You are too important to lose.”

Undyne grunts and finally the steady hum of her spears fades.

Arlene says nothing, continuing to smile. “You don’t have to worry,” she says. “V is watching over your Angel. He will do his fatherly duty.”

Toriel rears back like she’d been slapped. “He’s dead,” she says with rage. “Because of you and yours, he’s dead. He can’t do anything.”

“Oh no,” Arlene says, like she’s perfectly sane and they are the ones talking possession and haunting and bullshit. “He made his choice. And you made yours. I wonder if he forgave you.”

---

To their credit, the monsters manage not to lose it until they’re back down the hill.

Then Sans drawls. “What were you thinking, kid?” The others explode not long after.

Rachel prepares to swallow the defensiveness. It tastes like bile. “I thought she’d have more than she did.” Her memory wasn’t that terrible, even if she herself has gone insane. “And I wanted to see what she was telling Kris.”

“You wanted to go to the tower?”

She doesn’t flinch at the blue glow in Sans’ one eye the way Kris does. He’s not scared anymore. She just says. “No, not really.”

They fall silent.

“But you all are worried about him,” Rachel continues. “And you miss him. And the tower used to fascinate me when I was younger. I’d be free there, from everything. I’m not like Bam, but I don’t… I don’t belong out here either.”

She knows she could ignore her urges forever. She knows she could reach the top of a skyscraper and dangle her feet and be alone and content and then fall fall fall.

But that wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be the same as the adventures that made her heart pound.

“We are,” Toriel begins slowly. She struggles visibly hard not to lose her temper now after Arlene. “Naturally worried and thinking of Frisk. We’re upset about losing him and that they did not speak to us. But we feel the same worry and concern towards you. Arlene could have hurt you. That tower could take you from us as well, my child. We will not give up on Frisk, but that doesn’t mean we should like you to disappear in his place.”

Rachel stops walking. Her face flushes, throat closing. “Oh,” she says, and cries like a child.

---

She dreams that night.

She’s back in Waterfall, with Bam. They’re a little younger. She’s gotten a new dress. He’s laying seashells around her while she stares up at the ceiling.

“Trying to trap me?” she teases.

He shakes his head. “You’re free, Rachel. You can always go wherever you want.”

“You’ve gotten so serious lately.”

Bam laughs. “I don’t feel very serious. You’re just important to me.”

Rachel exhales and rolls on her side. Bam rolls his eyes and adjusts the seashells. “… Why did you leave then? If I was important to you.”

Bam doesn’t answer for a while, just keeps digging the shells into the sand.

“The same reason you kept leaving,” he finally says. “You had important things to do. I have them too, now. For Chara, and for me.”

“What about Asriel and the monsters?”

Bam regards her with his firelight eyes. “They were never mine. I was just theirs. They have to make their peace with that too now.”

Rachel watches the waterfall drip steadily by her eyes. “… I really took everything from you, didn’t I?”

“It’s too late to be upset about it.” His voice is matter-of-fact, forgiving and easy. “You should keep it all safe, now that you really understand it. It’s yours now, yours to protect.”

“They want to come after you,” Rachel tells him.

Bam shrugs his shoulders. “We can’t stop them, but I don’t want them to die trying, either. What do you want them to do, Rachel?” He finishes his shells, wrapped around her like a barrier, and shifts on his knees. Then he reaches over and pokes her in the forehead.

“They’re yours now,” he reminds her. “You can tell them what you want.”

Rachel opens her eyes. Asriel’s furry bulk is curled around her like a cover, likely to keep her there. But Kris is staring out towards the mountain. Their eyes are solemn and full of longing.

“Would i be free there too?” they ask after a few moments of silence. “If I lived there instead of here, would I be free?”

Rachel lets out a long breath, a shudder wracking her whole body. “I don’t know.”

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