Keep Warm

Keep Warm

The first winter after the monsters' release from Mt. Ebott was unusually harsh, as though some ancient cold had been loosed from the mountain's mouth along with its captives. After a deceptively balmy autumn, the temperature plummeted sharp enough to leave ice crystals sparkling in the early mornings and turn every plant pale with frost. Still, the skies were reasonably clear for a while - but then the first snow hit like it had just been biding its time.

Frisk woke up with a gasp, rubbing the side of his face.

It had felt like he'd been pecked on the cheek by an ice cube. He reached out and gingerly touched the wall he'd rolled into during his sleep; it burned cold against his palm, the winds outside fighting through the insulation. Toriel's house was a sturdy little thing, but the storm outside was fierce. Every time the wind picked up, the walls groaned inward and the windowpanes rattled like a curse.

He looked about the dark bedroom. Asriel lay still in his bed, facing the opposite wall, his fur faintly glowing in the dark. Everything seemed to glow, as a matter of fact - the world outside the window had turned a bright, hard white, printing a small square of radiance on the floor. Frisk leaned over and saw that the driving snow had all but erased the view, while delicate traceries of frost crept in from the glass's outer edge. He shivered and lay down again, pulling his blankets up to his chin. He'd piled on extra just in preparation for tonight and the cold was still worming its way in. He turned back to the wall, shut his eyes, and waited for sleep.

Time passed. In his half-waking state, Frisk dimly heard springs creak. The floor murmured as someone padded over to his bed. Then there was a rustle, another rush of cold air, and a sagging of his mattress as someone else slid in. The temperature under his covers rose appreciably.

He didn't turn around. "Again, Asriel?"

"Uh-huh."

"It's like the third time this month."

"Fifth," Asriel said. "Sorry."

Frisk rolled over then, to find Asriel less than six inches away, those round wet eyes shining like candle wax. He lay so close to the edge of the bed that he was in danger of falling right off.

"I don't mind," Frisk said. "But you didn't have bad dreams like this even when you first got out. What happened?"

"Maybe I had to get used to it first."

"What, bad dreams?"

"Sleeping." He tried to smile. "Flowers can't sleep, apparently. Definitely didn't help the boredom. Haha."

Frisk had no reply to that. After a moment, he sat up, heedless to the rushing chill as his blankets slithered off. He leaned against his headboard, palms crossed in his lap. Asriel looked up at him.

"Want to talk about it?" Frisk asked.

"It'll sound stupid." Asriel sat up, rubbing the side of his face. "I'll go back to bed. Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you up."

"I was already awake. And it might make you feel better."

Asriel kneaded Frisk's quilt between his claws for a little while, his fangs glinting as his upper lip rose and fell uncertainly. Finally, he started to talk.

"It's always the same thing," he said. "I wake up - you know, in my bed - but you're not there. Neither is Mom. It's always bright and sunny out, so I think, hey, maybe they just went somewhere and didn't tell me. So I go out looking for you-"

"In your pajamas?"

"Yeah, I'm always in a rush. So I go outside and no one's there, either. Street's empty. Not a sound. All I can hear's the wind. I can see through everyone's windows, but no one's in their houses, either. Sometimes I run all the way to Dad's, and obviously he's gone, too. And then I start thinking. That this was some kind of trade. Because I'm back, everyone else had to...you know. Go away." He glanced at Frisk out the corner of his eye. "That they're never going to come back. So I start calling out for someone to come, over and over again, and...well, you know." He bowed his head again. "The usual. Then I wake up."

"That doesn't sound stupid," Frisk said quietly. "And you know it's not true."

"Yeah, but it's hard to think that when you're dreaming, right? That's why I keep creeping over here. If you're here, I know it's real." He paused, then snorted. "Okay, that definitely sounded stupid."

"They usually stop after a while anyway. Bad dreams, I mean." Frisk paused and waited for the wind to finish howling. "Or you learn how to figure out when you're dreaming, anyway."

"Is that what happened to you?" Frisk said nothing, and Asriel turned to stare. "You make weird sounds in your sleep, sometimes. Not talking, exactly, just...really loud breathing. Kind of squeaky, actually."

Frisk grinned at that. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"You get nightmares, too?"

"I bet everyone does."

"Wanna talk about it?" Frisk shrugged, and Asriel's stare turned piercing. "C'mon. I shared mine. Your turn."

Frisk pursed his lips. He leaned over and stared out the window again, as if searching for answers in the white. When none seemed to be forthcoming, he sighed and leaned back again.

"It's not like yours," he said. "The one I have most often...I can never see anything."

"What, like you're blind?"

"More like I've got my eyes squeezed shut really tight. I don't know where I am. But it's always really hard to breathe, I remember that. Like someone's sitting on my chest. And even though I can't see or hear anything, I feel like something's chasing me. Just about to catch up. And I can't call for help, because I don't have enough air." He shrugged again. "I always wake up right before I think it's about to touch me."

"That sounds pretty bad."

"It gets easier. And it hasn't been happening as much, lately."

Asriel fell silent after that. Then, he clambered out of the bed and padded over to the window. Frisk gathered his blankets around him and scootched to the edge of the bed as he watched Asriel lean into that hard white glow, hands on the windowsill. That light against his fur and fangs seemed to turn him almost invisible, so that only his pajamas were left floating in the murk.

"You said everyone had bad dreams," he said. "Wonder what Dad must be dealing with."

When they came over to visit, it was easy enough for them to tell when Asgore wasn't sleeping soundly. The king's snoring was loud and rough as heavy traffic. Whenever that persistent rumble ceased, the ensuing silence was loud enough to wake them both up. And it didn't start again easily. Some mornings, Asgore was barely able to drag himself to the breakfast table - smiling and genial as always, but with heavy-lidded, haunted eyes.

Frisk chewed his lip. "Yeah. I never ask him about it."

"Sometimes he looks at me like he can't believe I'm there. He tries to hide it, but you know Dad. He's terrible at keeping secrets. You hear what he's been doing lately?" He leaned in closer, until the tip of his muzzle almost touched the glass. "Trying to find the families of the kids who...you know."

"Yeah. Sans told me."

"Mom told me. Took a while, though. I kept asking what Dad was doing when he wasn't home over the weekends." He shivered. "Maybe once he's done he'll sleep a little better. I hope it's worth it."

"You're worried about him."

"Why wouldn't I be? Humans are scary when they get mad." His claws scraped across the sill. "I know that better than anyone. Uh, no offense."

"None taken."

"Come to think of it," he said quietly, "I started waking up a lot more after I found out. Maybe I should've just minded my own business."

"He's your dad. It's okay to worry about him." He pulled his blankets tighter around himself, his bare feet dangling from the mass. "Why don't you talk to him about it, too? It might make you both feel better."

"Yeah, well, of course you'd think that."

Silence rolled out. Frisk fought to keep his teeth from chattering as the chill bit at his bare skin. Asriel stared out the window contemplatively. The frost continued to creep across the glass in its sharp, many-edged patterns.

"Man, and I thought Snowdin was bad. I've never seen it snow sideways before." Asriel pushed away from the window and stepped back into the dark. "Hey, Frisk. You really think everyone has bad dreams?"

"I think so, sure."

"Even Papyrus?"

"Okay, maybe not Papyrus."

"No, no, listen. I can totally picture it." He turned to face Frisk and held an index finger under his chin; a small ivory spark burst from the tip, framing Asriel's face in ominous shadow. His voice dropped to a whisper.

"Imagine," he said. "It's dinner time. Papyrus is serving spaghetti to everyone - you, me, Sans, Mom and Dad, Alphys, Undyne, even Mettaton. He watches us all take a bite. Then we all turn to face him...and say that it was okay."

"Just okay?" Frisk was trying and failing to force back his grin. "Not terrible or anything?"

"I mean, it's Papyrus we're talking about."

"Yeah, we probably just say it's decent."

"Seven out of ten, tops."

"But then he just takes it as a sign that he's got to cook better than ever-"

"-and then Sans wakes up, and find that his bed's surrounded by, like, ten plates of spaghetti, with Papyrus standing over him-"

"-wearing a big chef's hat, hopeful look on his face-"

Asriel leaned forward. "And that's when Sans really wakes up, because it was his nightmare all along."

Frisk pressed his knuckles against his mouth to hold in the giggling fit. Asriel straightened up and doused the spark on his finger, looking very proud of himself.

"See, that's how you do a joke," he said. He sat beside Frisk on his bed and Frisk opened up his cocoon of blankets; Asriel pulled them around him, encasing them both. Frisk's shivers calmed.

"I still think puns are better," he said.

"You're hopeless." He looked at the window. "No way we have school tomorrow, at least."

"Mom's our teacher, Asriel. I think school's wherever she wants it to be."

"Let me dream, Frisk."

"Okay." His voice became faint. "Hope they're nice ones."

Before Asriel could work out what he'd just heard, the weight of Frisk's body against his own increased considerably. He slumped against Asriel's shoulder, his breath slow and even. Asriel opened his mouth, closed it, then gently jostled Frisk.

"Hey," he whispered. "Hey, Frisk, you're kind of...I mean, you should probably lie down before you..." He sighed. "Man, how do you do that so fast?" He gazed at his own bed. "Okay. Guess I'm not going anywhere for a while."

Their combined heat in this shell of quilts was too much for even the storm to pierce; the chill seeping through the walls and the floorboards fought for a while against that warmth, and then gave up. The tracework of frost on the windowglass spread its fingers, two thin tendrils in particular reaching out from either side of the glass. By the time they joined, knotting together and spreading their blue-white glow across the window, Asriel's head was bowed and his eyes were shut; the two of them leaned on each other, and remained that way until morning, when the storm had broken and the snow had wiped everything clean.