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Toriel Dreemurr, queen of all monsters, on finally reaching the third floor of the apartment complex, momentarily put down the twin bags laden with groceries and gave herself a moment to catch her breath. She did not grow old, so to speak, but years had a weight to them nonetheless. It would certainly help if the owners of this building took the time to fix the elevator, but despite her numerous (and increasingly polite) letters, the problem went unaddressed. Much like the mildew on the walls, or the overflowing trashcans outside which the municipal authorities never seemed to notice.
It turned out that being the queen of all monsters did not account for so much, in the eyes of the Local Government, at least when it came to allocating new residences. But it would not do to complain; any hovel on the surface was better than the dreary caverns below Mt. Ebott. And besides, an old lady like herself did not need much.
The bulb in her apartment flickered twice before fully lighting. She wiped her brow and set out the week’s groceries on the red chequerboard tablecloth. Five tubs of snails, for regular meals, with a nice cut of butter for midnight ‘snacks’. A bottle of olive oil for the knotty curls of her fur. Sugar, flour, chocolate and other sweet things for Frisk’s care package—they were visiting in a month or two when the semester ended, but she enjoyed the routine of mailing out the box anyway.
A small paper packet of pumpkin seeds.
A frivolous purchase, really. Not for any kind of serious project. She merely saw them while waiting at the supermarket checkout, on one of the little stands above the belt. Despite always thinking that the practice was an insult to the intelligence of the poor consumer, she found herself furtively tossing a packet into her cart.
She folded the shopping bags in half, stowed them under the sink, washed her hands. And stared at the seeds.
Sigh. This, again. If she tried to ignore it, she wouldn’t be able to think of anything else all day.
It probably wouldn’t even happen. But she had to know.
Toriel snatched up the seeds and went out to her garden on the balcony. There were only a few meters of free space out here, but after some creative work strapping planters to the railings, she had cultivated a very decent garden, if she said so herself. Cherry tomatoes, spring onions and a handful of peppers took up the far side, adding some bite to her otherwise routine meals. One of the surface world’s most pleasant surprises was its variety of herbs, and she dedicated an entire pot to thyme; mint was also a favorite, though its aggressive spread made it a cumbersome fixture. Alongside them she regularly experimented with fruits, like strawberries and even limes, though this region was (in truth) not sunny enough for the latter.
And in the corner by the door, where you might not think to even look most days, was the planter set out for flowers. It was empty.
At first, she wanted marigolds, geraniums and lavender (what a wonderful smell!). But whenever she came to that empty planter, its soil dry and untouched, it simply felt wrong to disturb it. As if putting some ordinary flower there might stop it from happening.
She busied herself with the pumpkin seeds. Goodness, what was she thinking? There wouldn’t be anywhere near enough space here to grow something like that. Tut, tut. She fretted over the fruits instead, picking and peering at the newborn stems of green. It only happened, as far as she could tell, when she was fully distracted—he did not like to be seen coming or going. So she studiously avoided facing the empty planter, or glancing at it from the corner of her eye, or thinking about it too loudly. She would have hummed a tune, if she could remember any.
“You think that kid coming back will fix everything, don’t ya?”
The voice was always unnervingly chipper. Sharp in its tone, like a knife. Toriel fought to keep her back turned.
“All that time away in college, off having the time of their life… all without little lonely you. Tee hee! You don’t get it, do you…?”
“Hello,” she said simply.
“It’s only because they would feel bad otherwise, you know. If it wasn’t for their goody-two-shoes shtick, they’d leave you in the dust, like the old has-been you are. Gee, don’t you feel any shame, making them play pretend like that?”
Toriel shook out her gown and dared a glimpse over her shoulder. Once he started talking, it was usually safe. Yes: the hint of brilliant yellow petals, just like the sun. She knew that shade of yellow so well she saw it in her dreams. It was the color of another life.
“You know,” she said calmly, “Frisk told me they would like to see you again. They said there was a lot they wanted to talk about. I could let you know when they are scheduled to visit, if you like.”
The flower giggled. It was a cruel and uncaring laugh, like a man stomping on the skull of a beloved family pet. And yet, if Toriel listened closely enough, could she not hear something? Something below the surface that was faintly, achingly familiar…
“Hee hee! That brat can go rot, for all I care.” The flower’s tone did not change. “They ruined all my wonderful plans. Without them, I would be a god over humans and monsters alike. Now I’m stuck haunting sad old women. Oh well!”
This was their longest conversation so far. That had to be a good sign, surely. Usually, the flower popped up while she was distracted, spat out a few barbs and disappeared. But slowly, over the past weeks, it was sticking around for longer and longer. Was this the day she finally said what was on her heart? She felt queasy even thinking it. But she was too weak to resist any longer.
Toriel faced the flower. It went rigid—this was her first time looking at it directly—but did not flee. Goodness, it was a strange sight. Those button eyes and that perfect semicircle smile were like something from one of those ‘cartoons’ that children watched. It was hard to find anything at all familiar in that blank face. But she had to imagine there was.
“I…” she began. How to phrase it? “I would truly enjoy having you there, when Frisk returns.”
The flower blinked. Its petals swayed gently in the early evening breeze. “You would?” it said, genuinely confused. “Why?”
Toriel bent over the planter, a broad smile on her face. Finally, it was happening. What she had not dared to dream for in so, so many years. “Because then, it would be like old times, almost,” she said. “Me, and them, and you, all together. We could talk, and tell each other stories to pass the time. That sounds good, does it not? Asriel?”
That last word she said like a prayer. But as prayers went, it was uncomplicated. Please. Please, I’ve missed you so much.
The flower, the flower that somehow was her son, looked up at her blankly. Its face was open and loose. Did he not understand? Maybe he had not properly heard. Toriel reached out with a caring hand, and—
“That’s not my name,” the flower said quietly.
“My child?”
“My name,” it spat, “is Flowey.” Its face curled into rage. The smile pulled back, farther than seemed possible, revealing the sharp incisors of a predator. The black button eyes swelled into something demonic, wide, swirling, crazed.
“Please,” Toriel stuttered. “I simply want us to be—”
“GO DIE.”
The flower flung itself into the dark, uncompromising soil, and in an instant was gone.
That night, Toriel was in the ruins again.
Well, that was nothing new. Funny, though, how in dreams even the air felt familiar: cold and stagnant, faintly sweet with rotting leaves. She was at the clearing leading down to the old city where she scavenged and traded for supplies, an ancient cellphone in her hand. She was very worried about something. About what?
Well, there was a child there. She took their hand, and they went up towards the old home she once carved from cave-rock with fire magic. They stood before the black, withered tree there so she could get a good look at them. They were surely a human, fallen down from above. But try as she might, her eyes would not focus properly on their face; it was all a whitish blur. No matter. Every child had a name, a favorite food and a favorite color. She would remember them all. If she remembered them well enough, she knew with certainty that this time would be different.
She brought the child, who was already dead, into her home. She fed them, clothed them, taught them and loved them. How long, this time?
Toriel never saw the children leave. The world merely shifted, in that horrible way only dreams can, and she was suddenly fearful, looking for them, searching for them, knowing they had abandoned her like all the others. Hoping pointlessly that this time she was wrong. She ran down the stairs to the long tunnel that led out of the ruins, hoping to catch a glimpse and call their name. But they were fast—always too fast—and she only glimpsed their face. Now it was not blurry at all: it was her own face—no—it was Asriel, Asriel.
No. No, there was never a clean conclusion to the dream where she found a pile of bones or a mangled corpse. Instead she blinked back to consciousness in the dark of the apartment bedroom, a single band of moonlight through the blinds slicing up the headboard.
This place was always cold, no matter how many blankets she piled on. Toriel pressed her face against the pillow and sternly commanded herself to get back to sleep. There were things she had to do tomorrow, meetings with the Monster Caucus at town hall to suffer through.
Oh, but what use was pretending? She sat up, ran her hands over her worn face and drank readily from the glass of water by the bed.
This was better than when she was in the ruins, at least. Back then, the dream rendered her useless for days, unable to get out of bed or groom herself. Now it just hurt. If the pain of loss was acute, the pain of guilt was chronic.
Not the guilt of losing the children. That stung, badly, but any queen worth her salt knew what it was for people in her care to die. Back in the old war, she sent entire battalions of monsters against human camps for fleeting, pointless victories. That was a guilt she could merely drink away. No, there was a darker secret. One she only came to after years of shameful thought, and could only admit to herself after many more.
She did not love those fallen human children like she did her own.
She couldn’t. She did love them—cared for them, remembered their faces and birthdays even now, fell into genuine and bitter anguish when they left to find their fated deaths at Asgore’s hands. But it was not a mother’s love. Not truly. That was a special and unique breed, all-consuming, so powerful it scared her, drove her mad sometimes. She felt it most strongly when Asriel was born. Holding that squealing, slimy ball of kicking limbs in her hands, weeping openly, and feeling blessed. So few could hold a child and know its birth meant you would grow old and die: a special privilege of the Boss Monster. Nothing else could compare.
Yes, that was the root of it all. Her sin was the inability to love a poor, motherless child if it wasn’t her own blood. She hid it well. To Asgore, and Asriel, and the rest of monsterkind, she cared for that first fallen human flawlessly. Yet she always suspected that they themselves knew—that human was curiously perceptive, despite their youth. A tightness to their breath when she hugged them. An eagerness to pull away. If she had loved them as her own, would things have turned out differently? Would they have done what they did? Was that why she clutched so tightly at those that fell after?
The cheap plastic alarm by the bed said it was 3AM.
Toriel got up and went to the kitchen. By the refrigerator was a cardboard box, laden with her heavy cast-iron skillets to make it inconvenient to open. She heaved them aside, opened up the box and pulled out one of the wine bottles inside. It was going to be a long night.
The flower didn’t come the next day. Or the day after. Or in the next two weeks.
Toriel only went into the garden every other day, because if it was daily she would have to admit she was desperate. Her greatest fear was that it would never return, and the last remaining vestige of her son was gone from the world forever.
The only way to chew up the empty hours was with work. Since leaving the underground, there was a whole lot of politics to be done, figuring out things like taxation, residency rights and citizenship for those who wanted it. The humans were shockingly open-hearted towards their new brethren, but a few millennia of separation meant they knew little about the practicalities of monster life.
That was where Toriel came in. Asgore was busy on that silly business venture with the new Royal Scientist—the woman whose reckless experiments somehow resurrected Asriel into his degraded form. Without their king, the monster communities of the overworld looked to her for guidance and leadership. That damnable man, always looking to shirk his duties! So it fell to her to proofread legislation prepared by the Local Government, debate four-year plans, and read letters. Lots and lots of letters.
Dear Majesty, my daughter wants to know how the prophecy of the DELTA RUNE fits into the human religion. What should I tell her?
Dear Majesty, can you please make humans ban those awful things they call ‘cars’? The vibrations they make unsettles my jelly.
Dear Majesty, what are we doing here?
Toriel scratched out a sentence, paused, then carefully erased each letter with white-out. The words were not coming today. Usually, she could force herself to play the role of royalty once more, but it increasingly felt dry and distant. No matter. Queen she was, and so queen she would always be. Maybe she should reach out to Sans again. He did say he was always available to—
“Lady? Hey, you there?” The voice came from the balcony.
Toriel nearly kicked over her chair in her rush. She stumbled into the early morning sunlight, still in her dressing-gown, heart pumping.
The flower was there, same as before. He was taller than before, more active. He bent back and forth on his stem, craning his ‘neck’ to get a good look at her. The usual smile was gone; his expression was absent and searching.
“Ah, there you are.”
“Yes!” Toriel said quickly. “Hello, my—hello, ahem, ‘Flowey’. To… to what do I owe the visit?” She realized stupidly that she was still holding her pen from the letters. Rather than putting it down anywhere, which was the sensible thing to do, she kept it in her hands like a fool.
Flowey cleared his throat. “I’ve been giving things some thought. About what you said, the last time I was here. I understand why you called me that name. And…”
“Oh?”
“And I wanted to say, you shouldn’t expect to see me again. Please forget about me, OK? Just… live your life. That’s all. Goodbye.” He turned away to burrow back into the planter.
“Wait, wait!” Toriel cried. “Please, do not go. There is so much we must discuss!”
“Huh? No, there isn’t anything to talk about.”
“But—” Oh, blast this! What she wanted to say was so obvious and clear that no words could adequately express it. “How can you say that, when you are…” She took a deep breath. A weak smile came to her face. “When you are… him, are you not?”
Flowey shook his head. “Old lady, you’re getting confused. I don’t know what that brat human told you. But I’m not who you think I am.”
“I… I do not believe you would come here, just to tell me that. Surely there is a part of you which disagrees.”
“Hey.” His eyebrow cocked. “Don’t get it twisted. I got tired of messing with you, so I’m off to greener pastures. You gave me a lot of fun, over the years, so I’m making it even by giving you closure. Fair’s fair.”
“But you are him! I know the entire story. The dust, the flowers in the royal courtyard, the experiments in that scientist’s lab. Please—please—I want to speak with you properly, my son. Azzy…?” she said in a rising tone. “Don’t you remember me…?”
From the road below the balcony came the low grumble of cars and people gnawing at the fat of life. A million people lived in this city—more, now, since the underground went empty. A million people with their own histories, dreams, tragedies, and none of them mattered to Toriel. Only one person had truly mattered to her in a long, long time.
“You really are an idiot.” Flowey shook his head. Slowly, at first, but then with increasing intensity. “And I thought I was stubborn, down there, setting things back so I could try again. You… you really take the cake! Hehehe!”
“What do you mean, my son?”
His eyes split apart and reformed into swell black pools of malice. Those predator teeth grew monstrous, and Flowey became a singular writhing mass flowing over the planter’s sides. Pulsing vines whipped out from its confines to grab at her. “I’M NOT YOUR CHILD, HAG.” The voice screeched madly into the morning air. “IF YOU WANT TO SEE ASRIEL SO BADLY, WHY DON’T YOU THROW YOURSELF OFF THIS BALCONY? OR MAYBE I SHOULD DO IT FOR YOU? KEHEHEH! I STILL HAVE SOME POWER, YOU KNOW!! POWER ENOUGH TO TURN A FOOL LIKE YOU TO DUST AND—”
Toriel threw the pen at him. It knocked him back into the dirt. Flowey blinked, confused.
“WHAT DID… WHY DID YOU JUST DO THAT?”
She crossed her arms and glared down at the flower. Her heart was racing, but she would not let it show. “Enough of that!” she said. “That face might frighten a fallen child, but I have seen much worse on the battlefield, and done worse all the same.” With a click of her claws, a bright searing flame burst to life in her palm. “Do not think I cannot defend myself! Or did you forget how this feels?”
The wooden rafters of the balcony steamed as the morning dew on them evaporated from the intensity of the fire. Flowey’s vines curled back and his face slowly settled into its usual smirk. “Funny. Reallllll funny. Alright, old lady, you won this one. But it’s not like it changes anything. I’m still going to leave, and you’re never gonna see me again. Your choice if that keeps you up at night or not.”
Toriel grimaced. Why was this all going so wrong? When Frisk told her of Flowey’s true nature, her heart soared. It was the one thing you never got in this life: a true second chance. For it to disappear in front of her like this was cruelty beyond compare. She refused to accept it. “Explain yourself, at the very least!” she said. “If you are so insistent you are not my son, tell me, why? What has changed in you? You were never like this, before…”
“What, do you think the other royal child was a bad influence on me? Hee, hee. You wouldn’t be so wrong, I suppose.”
Toriel paused. “So you remember them? From back then? And you still deny you are my Asriel?”
Flowey rustled in place. His vines slickly retreated back into the planter, and he was once more nothing but a cute, harmless flower. His smile, more than ever, looked painted on.
“Look. If you want the sappy heart-to-heart, fine. I do have that boy’s memories. I remember every last bit of it. But, those memories? They’re not mine. It’s like watching someone else doing things, on a movie screen. No connection. No nothing. Hey, when that brat told you about me, they said I was soulless, right?”
She nodded, though she did not understand what that really meant. How could anything alive—anything that spoke and acted in the world—truly not have a soul?
“You should know as well as anyone, Queenie, that the SOUL is the culmination of your being. Only, what does that actually mean? Memories… those aren’t that important. Not in the long run. If someone hits their head and forgets who they are, they’re still the same person. They go right back to making the same mistakes. What about personality? No, that changes too. People put on different masks all the time, depending on their environment… who they talk to… what they want to achieve. What it really means to be someone…” Flowey smiled sweetly. “It’s how you relate to others. How you ‘feel’ about them. How you ‘love’ them.”
Toriel felt deeply sick.
“When Asriel died,” Flowey continued, “their SOUL shattered, and all their feelings for you and that old fool of a king shattered alongside it. Gone forever, like dust in the wind. Tee-hee!” In sick illustration, his face went entirely blank: a featureless void of plant membrane, no eyes, no mouth. Nothing to latch onto.
“What… are you saying?”
“It’s simple, you stupid woman. I don’t love you, or anyone, or anything. I can’t EVER love you.” He smiled broadly. “So, I can’t be Asriel. Make sense?”
Toriel stood still, focusing on her breathing. Three breaths focusing on your hands, three focusing on your feet, three on your chest. An old military trick for keeping your composure: something so practiced it came to her unthinkingly in times of stress. Faintly, she considered that Flowey might be lying. He would clearly say anything if he thought it would hurt her. But, no. This came too freely and without pretension. It was all true.
Her love for Asriel still burned wildly. It never dimmed a fraction, over that century in the ruins. It drove her, in the same way she supposed it must have driven Asgore on his foolish quest for human souls. It yearned for something to consume in its flames, but now there was no oxygen in the world to feed it. In fact, there was nothing alive in the world at all. Everything was stale, tasteless and old.
“Hey, lady. Were you even listening to a word I said?”
“Please go,” she muttered, looking at the ground.
“…ah.”
She didn’t see Flowey leave, nor did she care. She was the only person in the history of the world to watch their son die in front of them twice.
The days played out quietly and without fuss. Things happened arbitrarily, without purpose and equally without consequence. Toriel slouched out of bed at mid-day, ate snails for breakfast, ate snails for dinner, and drank wine in the evening. It became tediously difficult to head out to meetings at City Hall, so she sent delegates in her place. In time the council stopped requesting her presence.
At least Asgore was there, the first time around. The man was a useless king, but he was once a good husband. After that awful night, when they found their children on the golden flowers of the royal courtyard, he’d been strong for her. Kept his crying to secret night-time walks in the garden, where he thought she wouldn’t hear. Now Toriel had nothing. Sans would take her calls eagerly, she knew that. But he was clearly a man without pain in his past, and she would not burden him with a wound this raw. Nobody could know how this felt.
The only thing she managed to do, most days, was drag herself to the kitchen table and look through her mail. A queen she once was. And so.
Your Majesty, when will we get the medicine the humans promised us?
Your Majesty, why do we have to vote? Can’t just you just tell us what to do, like before?
Your Majesty, is this really the right place for us?
The right place. A question she’d asked herself more than once, these past few days. When she looked around this dingy apartment, the peeling paint, the yellowing plastic oven-top, she felt like she was being buried alive. It made her jitter, bang her knee nervously against the bottom of the table.
All those years spent dreaming of the surface. Imagining the splendor of the sun, its warmth, the freedom of green fields. Now she was here, the underground felt nostalgic. Life was simpler then—there was freedom in hopelessness, after all. One evening in front of the fire at her home in the ruins was much like any other evening. The children came, and left, and she wept when they did, but with less surprise each time.
She could go back there. The underground wasn’t fully abandoned, after all; a few monsters were unable or unwilling to leave. They needed guidance too, didn’t they? They would welcome their noble Queen. Everything would be like it was before… yes, then she could…
Her knee hit the table with particular force and the stack of letters tipped over. One fell to the floor. “Oh, hell,” she muttered. She picked it up, turned it around, read the signature on the front and gasped.
It was Frisk’s handwriting.
She sliced open the envelope with her claw. The letter was long: five straight pages of their scrunched-up, loopy script. As for the content? Well, truthfully, it was normal. Absolutely normal. College life, exam stress, new friends and enemies, an off-handed reference to some girl called Susie. But waiting patiently at the end was a knife meant for her gut:
"Love, Frisk. See you soon, Mom."
Mom.
What could she do against that? There was no defense. Not really. That strange child loved her and called her Mom. Even if they did once try to flirt with her. No, there was no two ways about it. Toriel did not cry—she had not cried in a hundred years—though her hands shook as she neatly folded Frisk’s letter back up. They were nothing like any child she’d ever met. No mirror to the rosy-cheeked introvert who once played hide-and-seek with Azzy in the corridors of the royal palace.
But, what did that matter?
A selfish old fool. That’s all she was. So caught up in her own fantasies about the past that she could convince herself that west was east and north was south. Try as she might to pretend she was still nothing but Asriel’s mother, others disagreed. Sometimes it felt like an insult that the world kept turning, after he died, but it turned regardless. The prophecy, which once seemed unchanging and eternal, came true; the underground emptied, and it was all thanks to Frisk. Could they change an entire race of people, and not one woman?
She knew then what to do.
Toriel went to the balcony, pulled open the screen door and stood before the empty planter. “Show yourself,” she said. Nothing happened. She crossed her arms. “Do not play games with me, child! I know you can hear me. I wish to speak with you.”
Reluctant vines budged up through the soil. The bulb of Flowey’s head pulled up last, shaking off a fine dusting of dirt. One eyebrow was raised, and his mouth was drawn to a straight and unamused line. “I’m not a kid, y’know. And you really need to learn when to let go.”
“I don’t expect I can,” Toriel said. “But that is none of your concern, anyway.”
“How’s that figure, huh? Don’t you want me to be your dead son?” Flowey giggled. “Your son who’s DEAD, by the way? If you like, I could tell you all about how it felt when he died—I remember all that real clearly. Did you know that dying hurts? It’s—”
“I want to get to know you.”
Flowey jerked to a halt. “What?”
She gestured to the apartment. “Would you like to come inside? I think there is much for us to talk about. And though I do not know if you eat, I was in the mind today to bake a nice pie, and you would be welcome to a slice.”
“…you had better explain yourself.”
Toriel knelt down before the planter. Flowey pulled back, wary, but did not flee.
“You… are not my son,” she said simply. It did not hurt like she expected: a more distant wound. “But, you know him well, do you not? Almost like you were a… good friend to him. And a friend of my child is a friend of mine. So, it seems only natural to invite you inside, for a slice of pie!”
Flowey blinked, mouth moving aimlessly before quickly tightening into a sneer. “Oh, this is so sweet I might actually throw up. If I had a stomach, that is. Which I don’t.”
“The pie is merely an offer,” Toriel said with a smile.
“Can it, lady. Jeez… you’re even more stupid than I thought. Naive, just like that kid. Let me make something clear for you.” His eyes blackened. “There’s no point being ‘nice’ to me. I’m not going to learn anything if you sing me songs about friendship. I’m not going to grow a heart. There is nothing in here left to love.”
“I would like to try.”
“Eugh! Oh, this is sick! Why… the HELL do you think that’s going to do anything, except waste both of our time? Are you some kind of stalker? Is that it? Well, the Flowey Fan Club isn’t accepting any new members.”
Toriel sat down on the balcony. The dust and dirt stained her morning-gown, but she didn’t care. It was shaping up to be a nice morning: the sun was shining, birds were singing. A whole world was out there. “It seemed to me that things were the other way around.”
“What?”
“When the barrier was destroyed,” Toriel said, “monsterkind became free to roam where we wished. No longer trapped under that mountain, the whole world is ours to explore. The same goes for you, too.” She looked down at the planter. “So why did you follow me here?”
Flowey pulled back, stalk straining. He did not speak.
“I often wondered, also, why you seemed to stay in the ruins. At first, I thought you were trapped there, like most monsters. But I know now that was not so.”
“That was—” Flowey said. “That was so. I could—any humans who fell down, their SOULs, I could…”
“It would not be to stay close to me, then?” She idly traced a circle in the floor with her claw. “In those years down there, I often had the strange feeling of someone watching over me. Not protecting me, exactly, though there would be little things. Heavy doors held open by vines. Glasses of water by my bedside, filled to the brim, which I did not remember pouring. Funny, is it not?”
Flowey was quiet and still. His stalk was loose and drooping, his face downcast. He was silent for a long time, and Toriel did not interrupt. When people were like this, she found, what they said to themselves was usually more important than what was said to them. A small and warbling sigh came from the flower.
“…it wasn’t love,” he said.
Toriel waited.
“At first, I tried to convince myself it was. I wanted to believe, you know? I remember how Asriel felt, and it seemed… nice. It’s as if… when you love someone, you never get bored of them. And I can’t understand that. I just can’t understand it. But I thought that, maybe, if I did things, it would, like a habit…” He trailed off. “I don’t know.”
“It is alright, my child.”
“It’s not. It’s just a sad joke. Nothing ever changes. I don’t change.”
Toriel slowly reached out her hand. Gently, she pushed up Flowey’s head, though he studiously avoided her gaze.
“I thought that of myself too,” she said. “But someone proved me wrong, in the end. Tell me this. When we were underground, I am told you were quite violent. You hurt many people. Why do you not do that now?”
Flowey shrugged, still looking away. “It’s pointless. Didn’t work. Just made things more complicated, that’s all. It’s… not like I changed for the right reasons.”
“One rarely does, I find.”
He finally pulled himself upright, away from her hand, and took on a plaintive smile. “Do you really think… this could end any way but badly? Both of us… want me to be somebody that I’m not.”
“I merely want to offer you a piece of pie, my child. I have both butterscotch and cinnamon, so we may have whichever you prefer.”
“Those are what he liked. Not me.”
“Then, we can find which flavors are your favorite, Flowey. That could be an interesting way to pass the time, could it not?”
“…”
“Would you like to come inside? I have an empty pot you could use.”
“…I’ve…”
Toriel waited patiently.
“…I’ve always wondered… what strawberries taste like.”
She smiled. “As it happens, I have some growing right here.”
Toriel rose to retrieve the empty pot from the closet and a trowel to transfer the soil. She did not know the person she would shortly bring into her home. But she had done this before, and could guess how the evening would unfold: a bout of initial awkwardness, oh, a few silent pauses that stretched on too long. But such things inevitably blended into a steady domestic comfort. In a few days, perhaps, the two of them could sit together in the kitchen and simply fritter away the hours, talking about whatever crossed their minds. Waiting there, waiting together—waiting for Frisk.
It was a mirror-image of something old. But then again, mirrors changed what they reflected, didn’t they? How silly she had been, to fret so over this, when it was really a situation she knew quite well. After all, she was good at learning to love wayward children.