GroupTale (Rewritten)

The Ruins

Ivan furrowed his eyebrows. "Aiden, you were just as clueless as me. Unless you lied to me." He sounded a little upset, but he tried to act like he wasn't.

"Huh? C'mon Iv, 'course I didn't know she was going to climb! I was also a little distracted." He rubbed the back of his neck. There was some cute girl at the library he often tried to get a look at when he was there, so he was reading while trying to see her, probably. That was Ethan's guess.

Ivan sighed. He could see through his brother's lies when he made them, but he was telling the truth, it seemed. "You know, I believe you. It's not unusual for you to be like this."

"Glad ya got faith in me." Aiden grinned, throwing his arm around him as they walked. "Anyway, is everyone on the surface doin' fine?" He looked to Ethan and Harmony. Emily too, but she was humming to herself and enjoying the scenery instead of paying much attention to the others. It wasn't intentional- Ethan was sure of that. Emily was the most extroverted of them all, but also the most easily distracted. Frisk was on Tessa's other side and was just staring at the flower.

Ethan nodded, playing with his gloves. "I mean, yeah, everyone's fine. But they're worried about you, Tess. I never heard any news about you or your brother, though. Sorry." He shrugged. He could only be so apologetic. It wasn't his fault he didn't know much about the pair.

"We only ended up here a few hours before ya, I'm not too surprised, ta be honest." Aiden admitted, eyeing Ivan to see if he was listening or if he was going to answer.

"Our mom likely believed we were at the park, so she didn't report us missing." Ivan explained, his face still in his notebook as he either drew or wrote something.

Tessa was quiet the whole time. It wasn't hard to tell she didn't seem convinced that she was being looked for.

"Tessa," Harmony tried to reason, "There's a lot of people on the surface who care about you and are upset you aren't around. Not just your father." She put her hand on her shoulder to reassure her. "Plus, you have the six of us. Doesn't that prove we care about you?" That was Ethan's best friend- caring, polite, reasonable- he loved her. No, he didn't mean romantically- she was just his best friend. It'd been that way for years. He didn't want to risk changing that over something like a crush. Not that he even believed he had one, right?

"I guess. But Olivia-" Tessa began in a mumble, staring at her shoes. All Ethan knew about Olivia was that she was Tessa's younger half sister. That was it.

"Isn't you." Frisk finished, gazing at Tessa with a smile. "Olivia might be awful. She might be a delight. None of us know. But she's not you, Tessa. It's you we care about."

"Yeah!" Emily finally piped after being quiet for such a long time. "We love you!" She beamed at her admirably. Tessa was probably closer to her than anyone else- she even promised to help find out more about her dad, Ethan had heard. From Harmony, that was. He didn't find out much on his own.

Despite being glad everyone was cheering Tessa up, Ethan cringed at how mushy everything felt at the moment. He hated trying to do the whole comforting thing with other people. "Yeah, love, affection, all that stuff. What they said." He didn't want to sound insensitive, but he also didn't like gooey, warm friendship crap. It felt like more of a fairytale or something than reality with all that talk. Then again, they _were_ living in a fairytale, almost. Monsters shouldn't have existed. He thought they were cool, but Harmony was always right about that. It all sounded too good to be true, but here they were in a world of them. It was paradise so far to him, though. He craved adventure and not constantly having to seek his parents' approval for everything he did. This was his freedom. He didn't want to stay here forever, no, but a vacation was what he needed. A vacation from his family, that was.