Chapter 8: For Being Here

Both Toriel and Macie understand what it's like to lose a loved one.


Toriel balances a steaming pie in each hand (dinner on her left and dessert on her right). She trots into the dining area and settles both onto the table. Macie haphazardly trails behind her, clutching a set of plates, cutlery, and glassware to her chest. The tall, anthropomorphic goat-woman tries not to wince as Macie dumps her items with an unceremonious flourish onto the tabletop. The cacophonous sound of metal, ceramics, glass, and hardwood striking against one another shatters the home's normally more peaceable atmosphere.

It is certainly nice to have company.

Macie swallows at the saliva rising in her throat as she arranges a third table-setting beside that evening's dessert pie. The muted smell of cinnamon and butterscotch leaks through the flakey crust tempting Macie more than she would like to admit. Curse her penchant for sweets.

"I don't know how long I can wait to eat." Macie says with a casual cheer. "When's your kid getting home?"

It was the wrong question to ask.

"My-?" Toriel's eyes zero in on the third set of dinnerware.

The pie spatula drops from the monster's grip and onto the savory pie it is destined to cut. The carefully crimped crust cracks open and a puff of steam escapes. The pastry sags soggily into the stewed snails inside.

"Oh." The monster says in an exhale that seems to expel the very life from her entire being.

Toriel drags out a chair and slumps into it. Macie pauses, eyeing her suddenly lackluster hostess. The goat woman says nothing and stares vacantly at the empty plate in front of her. Macie frowns.

"Is- ...are you-? ...um." Her voice trails away once she realizes there are no words to form for a situation she does not understand.

She does not know what is happening.

It is a bitter reminder about just how little she grasps about the Underground and its residents. Macie is in a place she knows nothing about. She was sharing the company of a stranger - one she'd met on that very day. Toriel gifts her with a companionship that makes her feel watched over, almost-safe. They had been settling into dinner like a pair of old, longtime friends until Macie's casual assumptions and seemingly innocuous questions tear open a wound she does not know Toriel has yet to heal.

It is a question any real friend should know not to ask.

On seeing the wounded gaze, Macie is forced to remember that she knows next to nothing about this woman. Toriel is a stranger. Toriel is a monster. A hum, deep beneath the anxious beat of her own heart, seems to waver and rise up against this thought. A small voice in her head reaches out and pleads:

Help her.

Toriel lets out a doleful sigh that makes Macie's chest tighten. Her body strains against itself, fighting between moving forward and staying still. Her arms twitch, desperate to wrap around the sad, listless woman so in need of comfort

Toriel is a stranger, she reminds herself. But the hum beneath her heart does not agree.

Help her. Please.

There is a pull, a tug. It sends her lurching forward in a single step towards the monster.

"H- hey…" Macies voice comes out more strained than she expects. It's as if her throat is fighting to say something else. Words that aren't exactly her own. She holds them down and says instead: "Everything okay?" The monstress looks up at her, a storm of emotions burning through amber eyes. A thousand thoughts whirl behind the monster's stare.

It feels so odd, staring down at the sad, sullen shape of a monster who has towered over her form every moment back to their first encounter. Now, Macie looms above her. It feels wrong. She feels uncomfortable and out-of-place at this new height. Macie hesitates only a moment before dragging her own chair to sit directly beside the lonesome woman. Now, at least, they were at the same level. It still feels uncomfortable.

Macie hunches over, lowering herself beneath Toriel.

"It… is fine." Toriel whispers softly. It is impossible not to hear the obvious lie threading through the goat-woman's sniffles. "An old lady tends to get lost in even older memories at such inopportune times." Macie cocks her head to the side not really understanding. But she's offering to listen. Toriel motions a paw towards the third plate on the table, "You have just reminded me of a time when there were children to sit at this table."

Realization dawns on Macie both creeping slowly and leaping quickly into the forefront of her mind. That too-tidy children's bedroom. The empty, dusty picture frames on every wall. In the back of her mind, a small voice whispers the name of someone she cannot hear. It's the name of a child. Of children.

"Your kid…?"

"My kids." Toriel corrects. Macie feels her heart lurch downward into the acidic bile of her stomach. That nervous, bubbling, churning feeling is back. Yet, Toriel graces her companion with the shade of a smile that will never fully form on her beautifully elegant face.

Macie hears the bitter laugh leave her throat before she can stop it.

Toriel's eyes fix steadily on Macie. The monstress forgets - for the moment - the plight of her own sorrows. Instead, she sees the edge of a pain that Macie tries to keep below the surface. Toriel's curiosity and concern focus on her human companion who acts as though painful, old memories are something of a longtime friend.

Because they are.

Macie looks through Toriel, mulling over the words that tumble across her tongue but don't quite make it out into the world. She wants to find the right ones.

"I don't think…" she begins cautiously, drifting into silence. The words do not feel exactly right.

Macie reaches out her hands to clutch around Toriel's own. They seem so small when compared to the great monster before her. The fur is soft against Macie's skin. The shaky breaths from Toriel's snout ghost across her cheeks. The monster is sitting so close to her, offering comfort to the stranger that had so pointedly withheld her own. Toriel is too close.

Once forgotten pangs in her heart suddenly make themselves known. She remembers how it feels to lose someone she cares about. She remembers how painful it is. How unfair it feels. How furious it makes her. If only she had been the one to- … thinking about that now does not help the woman in front of her.

Now, She's found the words. The right ones.

"Losing someone hurts. I've-" Macie swallows. "...you're not pathetic. Losing your family hurts and… I don't think it's a pain that ever goes away. It just… we just got used to the- ...that hurt. Enough to forget about it for a while."

A beat of silence passes between them before Macie finds the right words to continue: "Then something- heh, someone reminds us and everything hurts all over again. In fact, when we remember, everything seems to hurt more because we know we let ourselves forget. ...So, no, Toriel. You are not pathetic. Not for grieving. None of us are."

Macie swallows a thick lump forming in her throat. It does not move.

The rims of her eyes are burning.

She tries to think clearly. Her mind grasps at the fraying threads of consciousness that thrust her into this monster's proximity. She struggles to reach towards the speaker of that little voice so earnestly begging her to comfort this still-grieving mother. But they stand just out of reach.

None of her thoughts come together. She has offered the monster her words, her hands. But nothing else.

They are still just strangers.

But suddenly, unexpectedly, Toriel's arms reach out and wrap around her. The older woman is warm, comforting, and all-encompassing. Macie wants to melt into that warm embrace. The monster offers compassion and love to a stranger so easily. It seems so effortless: reaching out, finding solace in the presence of a not-so-strange stranger, loving them because they also share in the pain of loss. Macie does not understand why she held herself back from this in the first place.

"Thank you, my dear." Toriel whispers quietly into Macie's curling hair. The breath tickles the skin behind her neck. Macie wonders what Toriel has to be thankful for: the human who has done nothing but talk and hold hands.

The lump in Macie's throat dissolves into bitter acid at the back of her tongue. She feels sharp guilt in her envy for the mourning monster that so easily puts aside her own pain for that of a stranger. Macie wants to be that strong again.

Before Macie can reach up and return the embrace, Toriel pulls back.

She smiles softly at Macie, saying words that threaten to make her crumble.

"Thank you for being here."


Macie pokes at a large, firm glob of protein on her plate before gingerly plucking it up and placing the gravy-laced piece-of-snail onto her tongue. It could be worse. (If Macie were honest, she'd confess that this snail had been one of the better things to ever touch her taste buds).

There's a look of delight on Toriel's face that encourages Macie to take a larger, second bite.

"My first child he, hah, he found my second child. A fallen human, like you." She pauses, "...all other fallen humans were children too."

It's back. The bitter remembrance of loss. Macie thinks she knows how to handle things better this time. She shifts closer to Toriel and drapes an arm around the monster's waist. The monster lets out a breathy sigh and leans heavily against her human support.

"I should have never let them go. That sweet child. They will become ASGORE's seventh soul. He will use them to break the barrier and continue the war between monsters and humans."

Toriel laughs bitterly as Macie's blood curdles. Her arm tightens around Toriel, fingers digging into soft, purple fabrics.

The words of prior conversations flit across her mind as quickly as a rewinding tape in an audio cassette.

Monsters only have six souls. That's six (dead) children. Toriel never mentioned a seventh child. Not until now.

The thoughts cause Macie's heart to swell, soar far above the blackened dread always pooling in the pit of her stomach.

A child. A seventh soul. Frisk. She knows it is them. The steady hum beneath her heart promises that it is.

"Toriel." Macie is shocked by the unexpected curtness of her own voice. It slices through the monster's melancholy. "A seventh soul?"

Macie can hear that tittering laughter she chased atop the mountain. She can feel herself chasing after those tiny, pattering footsteps as they echo through her mind. The smell of damp earth and decaying foliage flicker at the outer edges of her fading memories. It all points to Frisk. It has to.

Toriel nods wistfully. Her hazy vision shows that she is half-trapped in the memories of her recent encounter with that small, human child. Her small, human child.

"A sweet child. Gentle. Kind. So determined to leave this place. To go back to the surface. ...I should have kept them here. I should have forced-, then you would both-, for dinner-, ah hah haha…" Lines of guilt crease the corners of Toriel's frowning mouth. The monster uses a clawed finger to push at a curled strand of hair in Macie's vision. "Is that why you have come? For the young one?" She laughs again, though Macie thinks it sounds more like the beginnings of a sob. "Hah, perhaps you are the reason they were so determined to leave. What they wanted to go back to."

Those words make that hum beneath her heart lurch forward.

Hot, twisting curls of steam rise from the remnants of the snail pie. They dissipate into the air. Two hefty, partially-devoured slices are removed from the source. Macie feels her stomach churning - no longer from hunger. Several mouthfuls of Toriel's carefully crafted dinner had satisfied that need.

She knows that it is fear making her stomach roil. Fear, like dark, wispy little worms writhe around the base of her gut. It is something else, too. Panic. Quiet, but seething and growing larger inside of her. She panics that the seventh soul still remains safely inside its host. She worries that if she does not move fast enough, some threat will come and rip it out from that tiny body along with the life inside. Then there is the guilt. Macie feels it wrap around her stomach and tighten. She is safe. She is warm. She is eating dinner beside a comforting woman who shares with her that feeling of losing beloved members of family. Macie does not deserve to feel this way.

Every second Macie wastes, she risks cementing herself in a reality where she can only yearn for a life that could have been and that never will be. Staying here, she is risking that someone will tear Frisk away from her. Permanently.

And yet.

She wants to stay here. Safe. Warm. Protected and hidden from the struggles that reality brings.

Macie presses her elbow into the table and leans her head into her hands. Her palms press into her cheeks and she scratches her nails against the old cap's frayed fabric. Her shoulders are shaking with indecision. She cannot stay here. She wants to. She does not deserve to be safe when they are not.

"I- Toriel. That kid. Where- where did they go? I need to find them. Toriel, please. Tell me where they went."

The wistful melancholy leaves Toriel's face. It bleeds into something else entirely. A stubborn, willful, ignorance.

"It is safer in the Ruins, Macie. With me." Toriel mutters this without looking at her companion. "All humans who enter the Underground are marked for death by ASGORE. ...If I let you go after this child, surely you will both die. How does… how does that help anyone?"

Macie drops her arm from around Toriel and twists herself to stare up at the monster earnestly. There are unshed tears in those amber eyes. She tries not to sound desperate. She tries not to beg. "Please, Toriel." It sounds more like a demand. "Please." Now it's desperate. "Frisk is alone. I have to- I can't- I… I wasn't there for them when they needed me. I can't let that happen again."

The goat woman frowns. Her brow creases forward in vexation. She's watching Macie plea so desperately for aid in her own demise.

"I- …I know I'm not exactly prepared to be down here. To deal with a race of monsters that would sooner crack me open for this stupid soul- but…! I still have to try. For Frisk. I need to be there for them. I have to try to be there for them because I wasn't there before. And I should have been."

Toriel lets out a choked sigh.

The monster was not given a chance to risk herself for her own children. Had she the opportunity, would she have been so brave? Or stupid? She stares down at the woman who stares right back up with focused, pleading eyes. She does not want to help another human walk on the path that ends in their death. It is the last thing she wants. She will do it anyway.

"Alright. I will… help where I can."


A/N:

Early chapter to celebrate Undertale's 6th anniversary !

It was ...tough... writing two women talking to each other without constantly re-using their names / confusing who I intended to reference with "she". Hope things turned out alright !