Not One, But Seven

Her Patience

He wasn't sure how long it'd been since the end of his children's lives, but surely it had been years. He and Toriel spoke sporadically, but there was no real bad blood between the two of them. She wandered the Underground with a vacant look in her eyes; she loved talking to the locals, especially the children, but he couldn't handle seeing anyone out of his own free will. Of course he loved his people and offered as much as he could when they came before him, but his social inclination simply was no longer there. Toriel worried for him, but she didn't seem to truly mind either way what he did. The death of their children and his subsequent declaration of war had certainly changed them, and he often wondered if she missed him like she did their babies.

Gaster was grim when he told him the news. There was another human that had fallen Underground, a child at that. This motivated him to finally leave his home and journey to his lab to watch this new child wake. This child was a young girl with a ribbon tied in her dark hair, and according to Gaster she'd been unconscious for several hours. He wasn't even sure if she was still alive, but the king could see the way her shoulders occasionally twitched. Surely she was alive, and eventually she would wake and he could go about killing her.

When she did wake, however, he felt a familiar burn in his heart. Her eyes are weren't red and she looked considerably younger than his adoptive child, but she was a human just as much as Chara was. She looked absolutely terrified as well, frantically looking around and huddling her knees to her chest.

"My, she is a tiny creature," Gaster mused, his holed hands moving in thoughtful motions. "How will you go about killing her?"

"I do not know," he replied gravely. "Let us observe her for now. She fell into the Ruins, and as far as we know, it's a place full of infection and dangerous obstacles. Perhaps...Perhaps we will not have to..."

The words fell away from his mouth as the child stood up, her blue eyes full of tears. She was gripping something her right hand, a small toy knife that trembled with her petite body. Slowly she stepped forward, carefully stepping over the bed of flowers she'd fallen into and proceeding into the darkness.

"I only have a limited amount of cameras in the Ruins, Your Majesty," his scientist reminded. "Most monsters don't inhabit that area for the reasons you previously named off, so I haven't felt the need to monitor it."

"Do not worry about it. We will watch her where we can and proceed inside if we don't detect activity for long periods of time."

He merely nodded in agreement and handed him a monitor so that he could watch as well at his discretion. As he made his way back to his home, he wondered how Toriel would react. She cared so deeply about every living creature, especially children, and might even want to help the child. It was just her maternal instincts, but if he was going to gather souls to cross the barrier, there was no way he could allow her to intervene. He would simply have to keep this child a secret, at least while she was alive.

The day the earthquake rattled the Underground was the day he knew it was over for the child. Buildings crumpled, several monsters 'fell down', and dust clogged the air so heavily it was hard to breathe and see. As soon as the cleanup was well underway, he checked the cameras frantically until he finally found her.

She was stuck in a grooved area, one shaped like a 'T'. She was looking at a pile of rocks that'd fallen from the ceiling, their shadow almost completely engulfing her from view. The way he saw it, there was no way out from this prison.

The human, whose name he'd yet to learn, didn't seem to be bothered. Her immense fear had dissolved in the two weeks she'd been Underground, and until this point she was almost always moving. She was always careful to explore everywhere she went, which would explain why she was trapped in such an obscene place, but her sense of patience was something he admired. He was less than tolerant of the time she was taking- her pending death weighed his mind down constantly now- but she was still fascinating.

He was positive it was over now nevertheless. She could not and would not escape this area, at least not before she starved to death. The thought of such a young human suffering so much before their death filled him with a deep sadness, one that was almost strong enough to break the determination to let her die.

The last thing he saw of her before he shut off his monitor was her grabbing a rock from the immense pile and pulling it out of her path.

He wondered how such a small child could be so patient every second she was trapped. When he ventured into the Ruins with a couple of Royal Guardsmen sworn to secrecy, they'd found her crushed under the weight of her task removing the boulders. She laid half-out of the room, the rocks that crushed her unmoved despite the small golden flower laid beside her.

The guardsmen moved her quickly and he opted to carry her. After all, her death was undeniably his fault; not even Gaster could be blamed for his ruling. As they walked back toward the laboratory to retrieve her SOUL, he pondered on how he would present her to his people. He believed she deserved to be cleaned up a bit, maybe even given a better name than 'The Second Human'.

As her SOUL was extracted and it glowed a calm light blue, he was reminded of her patience. He was also reminded of the tracking he'd been keeping of her time Underground, the marks on the piece of paper representing the days. These markings were known as tally marks, which representing a period of waiting no matter how long the period may turn out to be.

Tally. Yes, that would be a fine name for this child.