A quick piece of family history that takes place when Frisk is sixteen

The greenhouse had been your idea. Dad had a small one at his own house, and it had planted the seeds of the idea in your mind; after the first winter of endless white and grey, it had been easy enough to sell Mom on the idea of having one at the big house. It would let you have a garden to play in all winter long, and a growing kid needed a garden. The fact that Dad was clearly the best person to care for the greenhouse was merely a coincidence. Mom hadn't liked that much, but she couldn't deny the truth of it, either, and not even her iron will was a match for Dad's sheer, unbridled delight when you proposed it to him. In the end, she couldn't deny him that happiness.

Over the years, the gardens had flourished under his gentle hands. The greenhouse you'd had built was massive, and Asgore had filled it with an eden of trees, and flowers, and flagstone paths. He coaxed something truly magical out of the earth in the time he'd had here; it always makes you feel a little like you're back Underground. The soft music of the waterfall tumbling over the rocky wall near the house masks your footsteps as you wander into the gardens. As you pass beneath the ivy-covered arch over the main path, you brush aside the hanging branches of flowers that cover the archway like a curtain, revealing a wealth of colour beyond.

Wending your way deeper between the brimming flowerbeds, you hear the chirping of birds near the gazebo. You change your course to duck along a side path and over a small, arched bridge. The fish in the small stream that winds between the flowerbeds flash like comets against the dark stones that line the bottom, startled by your passage as you make your way toward the birdsong. Asgore had never had the heart to turn the birds that had found their way into the greenhouse out into the cold, and they often serenaded him now as he worked.

The air around you turns golden, filled with the heady scent of the flowers surrounding the gazebo. Every time, the reminder calls a sharp pang from your heart, but you've had many years to get used to it. They really have taken to the place. Raised from the Underground and into the endless summer of the greenhouse, they surround the gazebo with a riot of gold. Some of the blossoms are easily as big as your head, now, and they nod at you in the wake of your passing. You twirl in place, taking in the glorious sight of them, and nearly trip over your father. As big as he is, he's nearly lost in the flowers, and the bright silk of his floral shirt acts like camouflage against the blooms.

"Oh, howdy, Pumpkin!" He puts out a hand to steady you, his delight at seeing you writ large on his face. His complete inability to hide what he was feeling was one of the things you had come to love about him over the last eight years, though it meant that he got thoroughly fleeced every time Sans talked him into joining one of his poker games.

"Hey, Dad. The flowers are looking amazing!" Lacing your fingers together behind your back, you rock on your heels as you take it all in, setting your skirt to swishing around your knees. Today was one of your girly days, and the dress you're currently sporting is one of your favourites. From a distance, it looks like a pretty blue dress with white polka-dots. Only when you get closer can you see that the dots are actually little skulls. As the late afternoon light bounces off the flowers, it paints all of them gold. "Determined to take the Best in Show ribbon at this year's Winter Fair, huh?"

He laughs, a deep, booming sound that causes your bones to hum in response. "I don't think I have a snowball's chance in Hotland of taking it from your mother and her pies, but I'm willing to give it my best shot. This new mulch and a good drink of water should give these little ones a fighting chance, anyway." Rising to his feet, he brushes his hands against his pants and smiles down at you. "Think you can spare a minute away from all your serious duties to fetch the watering can, Ambassador?"

Laughing, you catch your skirt in your hands and drop into a graceful curtsey. "The Ambassador can spare the time, Your Majesty."

"Oooh." Asgore claps his hands in delight. "You're getting really good at that! Have you been practicing?"

"Uh-huh!" Grinning, you turn and bound toward the little stone pool where he keeps the watering can. "Be right back!"

His laughter chases you as you skip your way down the path, leaping the wheelbarrow rather than going around it. Apparently, it's a dancing day, too. You can't say you're surprised. This dress always seems to bring it out of you.

It doesn't take long to fill the watering can at the little pond, though you need to take a moment to coax a curious frog back out of it. It's just a normal Above frog, not a monster one, and the ride in the watering can would just confuse the poor thing. Hefting the big can with both hands, you hurry back to the gazebo.

"Everything okay?" Dad calls across the gardens.

"Yep! Just had to talk a frog out of coming with me," you answer as you round the corner past the rose bushes. Asgore is bent over the mulch pile, but turns at the sound of your voice. "I didn't think it-"

Your feet, gone suddenly clumsy, catch on the edge of a flagstone, and you stumble to a halt, the watering can dropping from your hands to splash its contents over golden petals. Your face heating, you tear your eyes from the pitchfork in Asgore's hand and quickly bend to retrieve it.

"Sorry, Dad, I think most of it's still in here. I-"

"Frisk."

There is so much gravity in the way he speaks that one simple word that your eyes are drawn toward him, and your cheeks grow warm with shame and embarrassment. You hide it quickly, but you can tell from the look on his face that he saw your brief moment of fear, and that he wasn't totally ignorant of its source.

"Frisk, please. Will you tell me what's wrong?" Slowly, with the care and gentleness of someone approaching a wounded animal, he lays the pitchfork in the blossoms, his eyes never leaving your face. His hand now empty as he kneels before you, he reaches out to you. Not demanding - he leaves it there, palm up, an invitation. The choice is yours.

Your hands find the handle of the watering can and grip it tightly. The smile you turn on him is just as tight, and you try not to let the disappointment on his face get to you as he lets his hand fall back to his side. "Nothing's wrong, Dad. I just tripped, is all. Come on, somebody has to water these flowers…"

But he doesn't move, save to glance down at the pitchfork that is now mostly obscured by the bobbing golden heads of the blossoms. "Do you remember the day you jumped off the roof of the Embassy?"

You make a face at that. It was three years ago, but it still comes up all the time when your friends are teasing you. Sans is the only one who never gives you a hard time about it. "Some of the details are fuzzy, but yeah."

"The doctor… she showed us your x-rays. Frisk… I may not like using it, but I know my own weapon well enough to know the marks that it leaves." He looks up at you, and there is raw fear in his eyes. You can feel the blood draining from your face, and he sees that too. "I do not know what the other marks were or why you bear them, but I cannot understand how those particular marks came to be among them."

"Dad, please." You wrap your arms tightly around yourself. It had been so warm in the greenhouse just a moment ago, but a chill has taken hold and won't let go. "Don't."

"I have tried to make up for what I did to the others. All our work with the Foundation… And there is not a day that passes that I am not eternally grateful that we were interrupted before I had a chance to fight with you. But there is something you're not telling me. Please, Frisk. I cannot make it right if I do not know what has happened."

His kindness and sincerity cuts as deeply as any blade, and you shake your head in desperate denial. "There's nothing to make right. You and I never fought. You know that, Dad."

"I do." He nods, sadly. "I also know that, while I may not have the knowledge to fully comprehend the work my royal scientists were doing in the years before you Fell, I am not the complete fool the human media likes to make me out to be. I have been a king for a long time, child. I understand enough to know the implications of the discoveries they had made." A tremor of shock runs through you, and your gaze snaps up to meet his. He sighs, offering you a small, heartbroken smile. "I will not ask again if you truly do not wish to tell me. But… but I hope someday you might trust me enough to do so."

Your eyes sting and you lurch to your feet, stumbling toward the gazebo. The wrought iron bench swings from its chains as you collapse onto it and curl into the eclectic assortment of fluffy pillows that have found their way there over the years. The greenhouse is silent save for the quiet creak of the swing - even the birds have stopped singing. Finally, you nod, and Asgore cautiously joins you on the bench. It's big enough that even his massive bulk on the other side of it still leaves you room to curl around your pillow.

"Imagine an otherwhen," you say at last. "A world in which a child left the Ruins as soon as they were able. A world in which that child was so eager to escape a place that wanted to kill them that they missed something really important that was wrong with one of their friends. A world where there was no one to intervene when they had to face… to face the King Under the Mountain."

He's shaking, and you want to stop right now, but he reaches out, hesitant. When you don't protest, he lays a hand ever-so-softly against your foot where it's pressed up against his leg. "And what happened to the child?" There's a tremor in his raw voice, and it's matched by your own.

"They died," you whisper. "Over and over. But they were determined to get it right." You look down at your hands, and for a moment, you can see the shadow of blood over the pale brown of your skin. The ghost of a sensation presses against your palm - the handle of an old knife, its blade dull from years of cutting flowers. An innocent weapon, never meant for so vile a purpose. "They didn't want to fight, but they didn't have any choice. And in the end… in the end… after so many little deaths…. they did it."

"They killed the King," Asgore says, miserable.

"No…" You draw a ragged, shuddering breath. "They showed him mercy."

A long, low sound escapes him, and you watch in horror as tears spill down his face. Your pillow falls to the grass below the bench as you pull yourself to your knees, shaking your head as you reach for him. "Oh, Dad. Please, please don't. This is why I didn't want to say anything." Grabbing another pillow, you dab at the tears soaking into his beard, and your vision blurs. "Come on. You're gonna make me cry, too."

"Oh, child," he says in a voice that breaks your heart. "How can you still stand to touch me?"

The sight of your father's remorse fills you with determination, and you reach up to take his great face between your hands. They are so little in comparison, but it takes no effort at all for you to make him look at you. Despite the stinging in your eyes, you refuse to let your own tears fall. "Dad." Your voice is firm, echoes of your mother's indomitable will in your words, and he quails beneath it. "You. Never. Hurt me."

"No," he says. "But that does not change the fact that the person who could still lives within me."

"Then," you insist. "Maybe. But that was eight years ago, Dad. You may not have gotten any older, but that doesn't mean you're the same person. We've all changed, and you've spent eight years doing penance for all the others. Even for me. Yes, I get nightmares sometimes, I won't lie. But that doesn't change the fact that I know that the Asgore Dreemurr sitting next to me right now is my Dad and I love him more than flowers and butterscotch pie." You fight to smile, though the trembling of your lip makes it almost impossible, and you pull him closer to you, so that he cannot miss your words as your voice threatens to give out. "The only thing I'm scared of is that telling him all this is going to make him too scared to hug me any more."

Indecision wars in his eyes, and you don't hesitate. Leaning forward, you place a quick kiss on the end of his nose.

For a long, frozen moment, he just stares at you, and a chill sinks into your heart. This was exactly why you didn't ever want to tell him. Things had been so good between you, and now he's staring at you like you're a total stranger.

Then, in another heartbeat, he surges toward you, sweeping you off the bench. Your feet leave the ground as those great arms pull you toward him, and you're twirling, spinning, flying as you both laugh through your tears. He is so big, and so strong, and so stalwart a protector, that it is easy to forget how fragile he is when it comes to himself sometimes. But now, you can feel only his strength as he hugs you, the great bulk of him shielding you from the shadow of your nightmares, and though his arms are hard as iron from years of combat practice (and a healthy dose of gardening muscle for good measure), his strength is so carefully controlled that he never even comes close to hurting you.

Eventually, you both grow dizzy from the spinning, and you come to rest against one of the flowerbeds, the golden blossoms spreading over you like a blazing canopy. You curl up against his side and his arms wrap around you as you both struggle to catch your breath. He's so warm, and you bask in the comfort of it as he picks up some of the flowers knocked loose by your tumble and idly begins to braid their stems together. Sighing, you finally let yourself relax, safe in the protective circle of his arms.

"Dad? Will you promise me something?"

"Of course, Pumpkin. Anything."

You bite your lip, watching his big hands deftly work with the flowers. "Promise me you won't tell anyone. Especially Mom."

His hands still for a moment, and you can feel him weighing the decision, the father measured against the king. "Are you sure?"

You nod, without hesitation. "It wouldn't accomplish anything other than making people upset. I'm okay. Really."

He picks up another flower and adds it to the chain. "I can't say I like it very much, but you're old enough now to make that decision for yourself. I'll respect it. But Frisk, if you ever need to talk about it-"

"I know." You stretch your arms around as much of him as you can reach, raising your face to smile at him. "I love you, Dad."

The warmth of his answering smile washes over you, and he nuzzles his nose briefly against yours. "I never thought I'd be in a situation where I'd be grateful for Tori throwing fire at me," he says. "But I am so very glad she did, all those years ago. You, young lady, are a treasure I never hoped to find, but I am so much richer for it. I love you, too. Very much."

"You're gonna make me cry again," you say, but you're smiling as you bury your face against his chest, and can't help but giggle as his laughter rumbles through you. For a little while longer, you rest in companionable silence as he plays with his flowers, until the colour of the light changes as the sun begins to set.

"You're sure you're all right?"

You nod, and mean it this time. "I'm fine, Dad. Honest. I'm just sorry it happened. You were having such a great day, and I had to go and rain on it."

One of his big hands strokes your hair, his fur snagging lightly on your curls. Your hair has been getting curlier every year, ever since you Fell, like your body is stubbornly trying to find more and more ways to separate Frisk from Katie. It's a new sensation, but you don't mind it much. It just means that when your family indulges in their shared habit of petting your hair, they end up doing it longer when they get stuck.

"Rain can be dreary," Asgore says as he gazes fondly down on you. "Sometimes devastating. But everyone needs a little rain sometimes. Rain makes the flowers grow." He raises the circlet of golden flowers he's been braiding and places it on your head, and the sweet perfume chases the last of the shadows from your heart. "There," he says. "It suits you." He blinks, and his voice turns thoughtful. "Rather a lot, really."

You throw your arms around him and hug him tightly, and he returns the hug with interest. "Oh!" he says suddenly. "You're cold, sweetie. Can I make you some tea?"

"I'd love tea," you answer, laughing again as he lifts you to your feet. He sets you back down in short order, but as you take his hand and walk with him back to the light and warmth of the big house, you still feel like your feet don't touch the ground.