Chapter Text
The next day was a rarity for Adelle in that she had the house to herself and nothing to do. She had the day off, but Papyrus did not, and normally she would go out for a walk when this happened. After everything that had happened, and the trouble she had gotten herself into, why buy more trouble?
What made it even worse was the new blanket of snow that lay on the ground, already being churned to gray slush by the passing cars. It was the first snowfall of the year, and the first snow she had ever seen. This year marked many 'firsts' for her, and most of these firsts happened in Tahoma's absence.
All things considered, Adelle thought she was doing okay. After last night's little 'episode', Papyrus went on a bit of a rant about the news, stating that it invaded peoples' privacy (which it did), and that it was mostly depressing stories (which it was), and he went on to advise her not to watch it anymore. She nodded, but she knew that she would continue to watch it. How else was she supposed to stay informed?
Papyrus...
The last thing she wanted was to bring him down. In her present state, she wasn't much good for anyone, let alone girlfriend material. So, what could she do about this?
These were the things Adelle pondered as she peeled apples for an apple crisp, a mug of cooling hot chocolate sitting at her elbow.
She, Papyrus, Chad, Burgerpants, and possibly Sans had plans to have a movie night, and she had printed out a drinking game for one of the movies. 'Labyrinth', Chad had called it. None of them had ever seen it before, and it was about thirty years old now, but it looked cute. She knew what it was about, and when Chad expressed concern, she had bluntly told him that she could handle it. A teenage girl wishes her baby brother away, and has to solve a labyrinth in order to get him back? Great! The implication was that the child eventually gets rescued; nothing triggering there! And Papyrus loved puzzles, so of course, he was in.
Adelle was shaken out of her thoughts when someone rang the doorbell, and she considered ignoring it. Everyone she knew was either working or busy, and she had no desire to speak to anyone she didn't know. On the other hand, it might be a good idea to sneak a look out the window and see who it was.
She wiped her hands and went to do just that, but the sight of Asgore standing on her front porch nearly made her groan. Great...what did she do this time?
Even worse, the former king had very good peripheral vision and he caught the movement of the curtains. He gave what most would consider a friendly smile and waved at her before folding his arms again and stamping a bit. His breath puffed out in great clouds, and he was trying not to shiver.
Adelle withdrew, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then opened the door. "Yes?"
She hadn't meant it to sound as clipped as it did, but fortunately Asgore didn't seem to notice. Perhaps he was too cold.
"Howdy. I just came by to check on you. Uh...may I come in?"
Inviting himself in. Rude. Ah, well. She couldn't very well leave him outside to freeze, could she? Adelle stood aside to let him in, and he stomped on the mat to clean the snow from his boots. "Here, give me your coat. I'll hang it up in the closet."
After she had done so, they simply stood in the living room for a moment. She avoided his eyes, which he noticed immediately. "Well...hm. I hardly know where to begin."
Adelle had no patience for hemming and hawing just then, and she resisted the urge to roll her 'eyes'. "Well, while you're deciding, why don't you follow me into the kitchen? I was kind of in the middle of something when you rang the bell."
"Oh?" Asgore perked up in interest as he followed her into the kitchen. "What are you making?"
"Apple crisp. It's for tonight."
"Mmm."
Adelle put on the kettle for some tea, remembering that Asgore liked it. She didn't have his favorite kind, but the stuff she did have wasn't bad. While she had her reasons for being unhappy with Asgore, she didn't want to be a poor hostess. Asgore didn't sit down; the chairs were too flimsy for him, but he seemed content to stand, and Adelle sent a wry look his way as she resumed peeling apples. "As you can see, I'm behaving myself."
"Ah..." Asgore looked down at his hands, then clasped them behind his back when he realized he was playing with his fingers; a childish habit he had never quite grown out of. "That...that is not what I meant when I said I wanted to check up on you, child."
"It's 'Adelle', if you don't mind...I feel weird when people call me 'child'." Or, more specifically, when he called her that.
"As you wish." The kettle began to whistle, and Asgore smiled and shook his head when Adelle began to wipe her hands so that she could fix his tea. "Here, let me. I've made tea so many times I could do it in my sleep."
Adelle shrugged and let him do as he pleased.
"I can tell that you aren't very happy to see me," He poured the water, ducking his head a bit so that his horns wouldn't hit the ceiling fan. "and that's perfectly understandable. After all, I showed up unannounced, and this after I've disciplined you."
Very astute, thought Adelle. "I'm not sure if you're expecting me to deny it or not."
"No," Asgore leaned against the counter as his tea steeped, the slight smile on his face indicating that he didn't take her words personally. "but I was hoping we could talk."
"We are talking. If you have something you want to say, go ahead and say it," Adelle began slicing the apples, privately surprised at how calm she was about this. She thought she would be angry that he was standing in her kitchen, but she simply felt tired.
"I saw the news last night."
Adelle dropped the apple she had just picked up. It bounced off the table, and Asgore caught it easily and handed it back to her. She glared at him.
"Forgive me. I wasn't sure if you had seen it too, but if you had, I wanted to make sure you were all right."
"You mean, you wanted to make sure I wasn't going to do something in retaliation." She resumed slicing, her movements quick and precise. "No. What's the point? You'd know who it was."
Asgore threw away the tea bag and sipped his tea. "Not necessarily. You see, you are not the only one who has suffered such a loss. It was always possible that there could be more than one monster going after humans. It's still possible, though at this point I think it's unlikely."
He watched as Adelle continued to aggressively slice apples, and he remembered the sorrow and anger from the monsters he had spoken to, monsters who had lost friends or family members to hate group attacks. He saw these things in her as well, but there was something more, something that he recognized. What he saw was barely suppressed rage, and the desire to act out. He knew these feelings very well, and he knew what acting on them could cause.
"May I tell you a story?"
"Go ahead."
"My species of monster only ages after having a child. The child grows up, and the parents grow old, until eventually they pass away. That is the way with us. But it's common knowledge that this...this did not happen with me. Asriel was taken from me when he was only eight years of age. This was several hundred years ago...so, as you know, I am very old but do not look it. You...you know the story of how I lost my children, do you not?"
Adelle nodded, feeling a swell of compassion for the man in spite of herself.
"Good, then I can gloss over that part," Asgore sighed, draining his mug in one gulp. "It is...difficult for me to speak of it. In a fit of rage, I made a decree that all humans who fell down into the Underground would be killed, their souls taken, and I would break the barrier and destroy humanity. I never expected those humans to be children..."
Adelle stared up at him, her face unreadable. She knew all this. But somehow, she had never really thought about it before that day in the police station. Asgore had murdered six human children. How could anyone attack a child? How were they any different from Tahoma? Barring the fact that they were human, of course.
Asgore sighed, hanging his head. "There is no excuse for what I've done. There is not a day that goes by where I don't regret it. Not just because my wife grew disgusted with me and left, but because...I...ahem." Asgore turned away to look out the kitchen window, controlling some powerful emotion with great difficulty. "A king is expected to keep his word, you see. Once I'd said that I would do something, I was required to do it. If I did not...I would be letting my people down. And yet...for every human child who died to free us, I felt like I was spitting in the faces of my very own Asriel and Chara. Was this what they would have wanted?"
The skeleton tried very hard to stay angry at Asgore for punishing her, to hate him for what he was now confessing, but instead she found herself fighting back tears of her own.
The old former king, who, in truth, did not look a day over thirty-five, cleared his throat again and wiped his face. "I was no different from the humans who attacked Asriel. I even understood why they did it! A monster showed up, carrying a d...deceased...human child, and what other conclusion could they have jumped to than the obvious one? A monster has killed a human, and would kill more if they didn't kill him first. Ah...Child, I mean, Adelle...can you not see that vengeance begets nothing but a vicious cycle of further vengeance?"
"Uh...I..."
Asgore turned to face her once more, wearing that same sad smile as before. He knelt down as he had in the police station when she had trembled so badly with fear and anger that her bones rattled, and he shook his head. "This is a dangerous path you have decided to walk. Not just for the rest of us. Anger is normal...It's part of the grieving process. But there are healthy and unhealthy ways of expressing it. I don't want to see you repeating my mistakes. Do...do you know what I am trying to tell you?"
She looked away, then went to the sink to wash her hands. "I think so. But I wasn't exactly planning anything. And last night, I wasn't...I...kind of had a panic attack, and forgot where I was. Papyrus was with me, but..."
Asgore stood once more, and waited patiently for her to continue.
"Look, it's embarrassing, okay?"
"You are not the type who likes any sort of loss of control, are you?" he asked gently.
"What was your first clue?"
"The attitude."
Adelle whipped her head around to goggle at him, and he smirked and raised an eyebrow. She tried once again to be angry, but instead she smiled ruefully. "Well, yeah...I've been trying to work on that. Last night, though...it was the worst one yet. And Papyrus saw it. Sometimes, I think I'm going crazy..."
"You're not going crazy, Adelle." Asgore joined her at the sink and began to wash his mug, but she took it from him and began washing it herself; he smiled at that. "You are grieving. You have gone through something terrible, and you're handling things the best way you know how, but...there is no shame in accepting help. There are times when we all must do this, whether we wish it or no."
She rinsed the mug and set it in the drain board, and she stood gripping the edge of the sink. "Well...how do you get over something like this?"
"You don't." Asgore's voice was full of compassion as he took the risk of laying a hand on her back, but she didn't reject his comfort. "It does get easier, and you learn to live without them. These days, they call it 'the new normal'. But there will always be times when you miss the person you've lost."
"Well, it sucks!" Adelle dried her hands on a towel and went back to putting together the apple crisp.
"It does. Now...the thing that concerns me now is the panic attack you say you had. Have you anyone you can talk to? Professionally, I mean."
"A shrink?" She raised an 'eyebrow'.
"I was thinking more along the lines of a grief counselor, though there is no shame in seeing a therapist. It's just something to consider."
Adelle thought back to how stressed Papyrus had looked in the moments after she came down from her panic attack, and her soul swelled with guilt. What had the poor guy gotten himself into when he decided to date her? She wanted to be with Papyrus, but she wanted to be someone who was good for him, not someone he had to take care of! Last night had been out of her control, and she hated it! If there were measures she could take to deal with her issues, it would be foolish to avoid them. "I suppose it couldn't hurt."
"Good. I know a good one. I believe I have his card here...oh...no, I must have left it at home. Well, I will get you the information later."
"I'm not sure if I want to...well...Okay, this is going to sound bad, but is he a human or a monster?"
"A monster, like us. I knew him back when we still lived underground, but I didn't start seeing him as a patient until after the barrier came down. His name is Silas, and he does group therapy as well as one-on-one sessions. If you can't afford him, I will cover the cost."
"No."
Asgore saw that he had touched a nerve. It seemed that her pride was one of the things she cherished. He tried another tack. "It isn't a freebie. Community service was a punishment, but I'm thinking of your long-term recovery. I feel that it is better to prevent further...incidents...rather than dole out punishments for previous ones. I'm only asking you to think about it. You needn't make a decision now."
Instead of giving a definite answer either way, Adelle mixed cinnamon into the apple slices and sprinkled the streusel topping over them.
"Um...you know, there is going to be a Christmas party to celebrate our first year on the surface. I was wondering if you would like to help with that, instead of working at the soup kitchen." Asgore said hesitantly.
"Believe it or not, I actually like working there. And I'm not really sure I'm up to a Gyftmas...Christmas party."
"So, you don't want to switch one for the other?" Now he sounded disappointed.
"I'm just getting used to the soup kitchen."
"Right...Well, thank you for the tea. I'll get that information for you. You'll think about what I've said, child?"
Asgore had forgotten that she didn't want to be called that, but somehow she didn't mind it anymore. "Yeah...I will."