Chapter Text
The air grows choked with dust and silence flows into the space where life used to be, the kind that worms into the head and rings in the ears. And if Clover’s hand shivers from some useless emotion, then what of it? The LV puts steel in his spine and makes his hand stone-steady. Soon. Soon there will be no fear left in him.
He meets the last inhabitant and truly hesitates for the first time. The monster looks human but for his skin and his horns. But he is no less of a monster for it, Clover reminds himself. The monster speaks of self-imposed loneliness and his regret. He speaks of a nightmare haunting him in a shape much like Clover. He is piteous. The barrel of the toy gun dips.
He wants Clover gone, but he won’t let him through. The world goes dark. Of course it would be a FIGHT. Of course. He’s just like all the rest, and he dies like all the rest, too.
The pair step onto the sand of the Dunes and it’s bright and blessedly hot, chasing the last of the lingering chill from Clover. Anger over his failure in the cave still lingers, but the weather calms him, if only a little.
Martlet shades her eyes with a wing. “Wow, we’re all the way in the Dunes. I, ah, don’t know how to get to New Home from here, without flying. Or Hotland. But I do know this place! From a bird’s-eye view, that is.” Martlet realizes the pun after she says it, rubbing the back of her head and chuckling. Clover politely quirks up one corner of his mouth and motions her to go on. “Yeah, um, anyways, on the other side of those mountains is Oasis. We can go through the mines to get there and…” She trails off.
“Start planning the rest of the route,” Clover suggests.
“Right! I mean, there’s gotta be someone who can give us directions.”
Clover hums his agreement. For all the haphazard sensibilities of monsters, he can’t imagine they would leave a place like this inaccessible to those without wings. There probably is a route that bypasses the Steamworks, though he never found it and doesn’t intend to use it, either. Unnecessary variables always, always lead to a mess. And that Wild West-themed town wouldn’t be unpleasant to pass through again.
At his side, Martlet starts the march forward. Clover wonders for a moment if they will move in silence again, even if it’s a lighter one. He doesn’t wonder for very long.
“Nice and hot, huh? I hate that you had to rip up your clothes, but… hey, at least you don’t need the sleeves anymore, right?”
“True.” Is she talking because she’s nervous or because she’s comfortable?
“And it’s bright. Brightest place in the Underground, actually, with that big Swelterstone in the mountainside. Do humans use those, too?”
“We don’t have them up there.”
“Really? We use them for light all over the place… is it all just lightbulbs and stuff, up there?”
“Mostly, yeah.”
“Wow…” Martlet stumbles over a rock in the sand. She doesn’t fall, but she grimaces as she regains her balance, then carries on talking, faster than before. “I, uh, I wonder… h-how do humans make all that electricity? We have the Core down here, but what’s up there?”
Ah, she’s distracting herself from the pain. Clover reaches for what remains of his conversation skills.
“Power plants,” he responds. “Most of them burn things. Some use sunshine and wind. A few use… explosions? Those are nuclear.”
“I don’t really know what the Core… uses. But it provides power to the whole Underground. I kinda wish I’d asked the Royal Scientist about it, back when I guarded her lab.”
“She built it?” He remembers the hulking silhouette of the Core during those few runs that made it to Hotland. It dwelled in the shadows of the Underground’s roof, the bottom of it barely illuminated by the magma sea. It had also made a great backdrop to that fight.
“No, I think it was the Royal Scientist before her. Can’t remember their name, though.” She pauses for a beat, then laughs a little. “How do the… nuclear plants make the explosions?” She carefully enunciates the strange word. New-clear.
Clover’s only ever seen it in cartoons where there’s glowing, green metal that makes the characters grow extra arms and eyes. “…Uranium? I don’t know.”
“I don’t think we have that down here.”
“That’s probably a good thing.”
They carry on like that for some time, talking about meaningless things. Every once in a while, Martlet will intercept a monster who wanders up to them, but she doesn’t look like she’s seconds away from dropping dead of fright like before. It’s… nice, despite how tiring it is to talk.
Martlet’s wing had posed some challenges, but the real difficulty, as always, was concealing how he knew the answers. The sandstorm was in the same spot as before, kicked up by that comically large and powerful fan. Martlet had tried to keep up with him as he dashed between cover, but it had bounced her arm around such that she was tearing up after the second sprint. It would have been easy to go ahead and turn off the fan, but there was no clean explanation for how he knew about it.
Clover had settled on telling her that no wind like this could occur naturally in a cave, even one as large as the underground, and that it must be artificial. So there must be a way to stop it. While technically true, the explanation was thin to his own ears and Martlet gave him an indistinct stare before simply agreeing. When he turned off the fan and returned, she looked very close to saying something, asking some damning question that would demand an outright lie or an evasion so obvious as to be telling. But she held her peace.
He’s grateful, but Clover doesn’t know how long this can last. He really had shown too much of his hand, back on the Ava, and now she’s suspicious of him in a new way. Less unpleasant than before, but harder to handle and with less obvious consequences for failure. Does he even want to succeed? He had wanted her to remember, but for as untrustworthy as Flowey is, Clover feels that his warning was sincere. A disaster could easily spin itself out of the full truth.
“Awww, dunebuds!” Martlet coos, jerking Clover out of his musings. It’s the first pair of dunebuds they’ve encountered. Clover is taken aback by how close they had gotten without his noticing. Sloppy. “They’re playing! Look at ‘em, Clover, aren’t they cute?”
Clover obliges and looks at them, but maintains a safe distance. They’re a couple of blobs of sand that smile and lurch about, using magic wildly and generously to conjure sand sculptures and giggling when they inevitably get thrown around. They have big eyes and silly smiles. They are cute, in much the same way a toddler is cute. Clover leans in just a little, and… nothing. He doesn’t like them.
If he tries, he can muster some remorse for having killed these things in the past. He hadn’t yet filled in the yawning hole in his memory, and with it, the understanding of magic’s place in monster conversation. He knows and remembers now, but the apathy remains and stills his heart. When his heart isn’t burning up with other, violent feelings. A normal person would feel the urge to smile at these creatures. Play with them. In his mind’s eye, Clover recalls exactly what a dunebud looks like as it dies. For them, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when life gives way to death, which is not the case with most monsters. They lose their shape gradually, melding into the sand, then turn to dust when they’re already mixed in. Clover blinks away the memory.
This is probably why he had failed. He had tried so hard to make a green attack, and it should have worked… but maybe it never could have worked. Martlet is Martlet and nothing else, as far as Clover is concerned. It hadn’t always been that way, but it’d been some time since he’d thought of her as a monster or a royal guard. But she is.
He has no love for monsters. It’s likely this is the point of failure, but he knows that he had wanted to help Martlet. But then, there are those dark impulses, pushing him and whispering to him and tempting him. Let her die. Kill her and move on. Move on from everything and every one. More than once, he’d almost listened. Can he honestly say that he cared to help her? Is there anything tender or gentle left in Clover, or is there only hate left to animate him, constrained by principles and promises?
Under his breath, Clover laughs. The likely answer is obvious to him, after everything that’s happened. But he would prefer to be wrong.
Watching the dunebuds goof around and play was a break that Martlet sorely needed. Near every step pricked her with sharp, cold pain in her wing.
She’s hurting, but this has been a merciful break in the stress of journeying with Clover. She’s finally managed to have a conversation with him and not step on some kind of landmine, and if there was an incident of Clover knowing a thing that he had no way of knowing… again, then she’s fine with letting the matter drop. If she thinks on it too hard, for too long, then that strange, nauseating static comes back and threatens a migraine.
Martlet almost laughs. The world has gone crazy, she reminds herself, not her. That’s worse, but there’s nothing for it but to keep going. She’s not giving up, and she’s going to get answers out of Clover. Eventually! She’s just… waiting for the best moment.
She glances down at him. Martlet doesn’t know what she expects to see in his face, but his eyes look… vacant. She had encouraged him to watch the dunebuds without thinking, but even with his hard demeanor, she figured he would enjoy it. They’re just so cute!
Just a glance turns into her outright watching him. She expects him to notice quickly, but Clover continues to stand there, eyes unfocused, his expression darkening. Martlet is just resolving herself to wave a wing in front of his face until he snaps out of it, no matter how rude it is, when Clover breathes out the most bitter laugh she’s ever heard and starts forward, directly toward the dunebuds.
“Uh…!” Martlet hurries around in front of him. He looks up at her, eyes flat. “Clover? Is everything alright?”
“…Just curious.”
Don’t jump to conclusions. Things aren’t going downhill this fast, Martlet. “Curious about what, exactly?”
Clover’s lips pinch a bit, as if uncertain. “Being friends. With monsters,” he says.
Martlet’s eyes light up. “Oh! You really want to try? That’s… that’s great!” Why does he look so down, though? “…Are you nervous?”
“Doubtful, mostly.”
“Clover, I’m sure you’ll do well. Monsters are made of love! They’ll be happy to play with you, I’m certain of it.”
“…Sure."
She feels like she’s missing something. Forgetting something, and not in the strange way that makes her head hurt. What is it? Martlet maintains her smile and it’s not especially hard. He’s really going to try it! “Go on, Clover. It’s easier than you think.”
He huffs another laugh, not as bleak as the last one but still totally joyless, and moves past her toward the two dunebuds. He stops well short of them and waits for them to notice his presence. Martlet restrains herself from advising Clover to call attention to himself, or to do it for him; he’s trying, presumably for her, so she’ll respect his way of doing things, even if it seems awkward.
It takes some time for one of them to see him, but eventually, it happens. The dunebud burbles happily and its friend turns to look at Clover too. Martlet sees Clover’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. He moves his hand away from his weapon. Then, as the dunebuds approach him, the world goes black and white. It’s a FIGHT.
…What? What’s happening? There was surely no intent to harm from the dunebuds and Clover hadn’t even touched his weapon! This is just like… that encounter with the insomnitot. She’d thought that was just a fluke, or that it had been grumpier than normal.
“Clover! Wait, this isn’t—!“
“I’ll be fine. Stay clear.”
She stands there in the pitch darkness of the FIGHT, not sure what to do. She watches Clover select the ACT button.
*Check
*Talk
There are no other options. Martlet is unfamiliar with how a FIGHT works and she doesn’t know anyone who is, except maybe Undyne, but she doesn’t think that having only two options is normal.
>Talk
*You try to talk to the dunebud, but you don’t have anything to say to it.
Martlet swallows. This isn’t right at all. But… it should be fine! The insomnitot had thrown a real attack at Clover, but only after it had been hit. The dunebuds don’t have an ounce of ill will, so whatever they do, it shouldn’t hurt.
The dunebuds decide that they want to play tag, rushing through the sand and throwing themselves at Clover. He sidesteps each attempt with minimal movement, which seems to delight the dunebuds. They gurgle happily, encouraged to go faster.
Clover chooses ACT again. The same options appear and the same result occurs. The dunebuds try tagging their new playmate with even more vigor, but to no avail. They squeal with laughter, gathering up sand with their magic.
“Clover!” He looks at her. The FIGHT has made him monochrome, except for his eyes. They remain the same startling yellow as ever. “U-uh…” Focus! “What if you, um, play with them?”
“…” Clover looks back to his menu.
*Check
*Talk
>Play
*You try to play with the dunebud, but your body can’t recall the motions.
Martlet stares at Clover’s dialogue box, which is a touch intrusive, but… where does she even begin?
The dunebuds erect an enormous sand castle, far larger than either of their individual structures. Martlet cranes her neck to look up at it and sees something come from the top. “What the…?”
Clover sidesteps an arrow made of sand. It’s as long as he is tall, with a shaft two fingers wide. The dunebuds gurgle; their playmate is so good at tag! But it’s no fun being “it” all the time, so they have to try even harder!
Martlet feels inexplicably queasy. This is still just playing. It is! Martlet knows that if she were hit with one of those arrows, it would just knock her around a little. Or a lot, but it wouldn’t hurt her, provided her arm weren’t broken. The intent to harm just isn’t there. She shouldn’t be afraid for him because… how can someone get hurt by a dunebud? They don’t have a mean bone in their bodies. And yet, Clover hadn’t been the one to start the FIGHT.
The arrows fly faster and harder. Clover is forced into making larger and less precise movements. Then, an inevitable error: a step taken a tad too slow, a path seen just a split second too late. The arrow shoots past Clover’s head, just as another had already, but this one leaves red in its wake. Clover’s cheek is gashed open and blood is running down his face, dripping off of his chin and his jaw and onto the sand. Martlet covers her mouth with horror and she gasps, just as much from the pain of having tried to raise both her wings as from the sight of the blood. At the sound, Clover turns his head a fraction to look at her, turns his mind away from the fight for a bare instant. The second error.
The arrow punctures his shoulder, going all the way through in a shower of blood. He gasps. The momentum of its passing throws him to the ground. Clover makes a wordless hiss of effort and forces himself to roll, narrowly avoiding two more shots.
The dunebuds warble, overjoyed, and let the sandcastle fall apart. They’re no longer “it!”
“…” Clover reaches for the ITEM button.
“NO!” It explodes out of her. “Just… stop! Everybody STOP!!” Clover looks at her. The dunebuds flinch; a grownup is yelling. She swallows hard, shivering. She takes measured steps, trying not to falter.
Martlet crouches down in front of the dunebuds and, with extreme effort, manages to steady her voice. Mostly. “H-Hey, little guys, you need to find someone else to play with, alright? Your playmate is feeling under the weather right now, a-and… he needs to go lie down.” They shrink in on themselves, almost disappearing into the sand, and make a sad sound. “It’s okay. You… you’re not in trouble. You just have to find someone else to play with.” She pats them both on the head. She’s shaking, but they smile and coo and the FIGHT ends.
The release of tension tries to bring Martlet to the ground, but no. Not yet. She looks at Clover. At the wound. It’s red, dark red, almost black. It glistens. She knows what blood is. Her vision tries to go gray. She knows it, far beyond the basic understanding her protocol manual could give. Why? But now isn’t the time for this. She approaches Clover, numb, as he works his menu with his one functional arm. The other… it’s ruined. “Clover, I’m so sor—”
“It was my decision.” He finds what he’s looking for and her trail mix appears in his hand. It’s so absurd that she has to swallow back a peal of hysterical laughter. She is not entirely successful. With no preamble, he opens the plastic baggie and starts eating fistfuls of old trail mix. She had picked all the chocolate and fruit out.
Martlet is completely and utterly bewildered. Was she the crazy one after all, and not the world? Maybe it’s both. Maybe Clover’s the one who’s lost his mind. But no, a few seconds after the first bite, Clover’s shoulder begins to mend. Martlet is transfixed as the bloody hole in him disappears. Completely. There’s only the blood on the sand and on his torn shirt to remember it by. Clover pockets the now-empty baggie.
Martlet opens her mouth and can’t find any words. Clover watches her, expectant, but as seconds turn to almost a full minute, she still can’t speak. Her throat is screwed up tight.
“Sorry you had to see that,” he says, eventually. Martlet violently shakes her head. He can’t. He just can’t apologize for that. Clover begins to look uncomfortable but continues: “I appreciate you breaking up that fight. I’m pretty low on healing items. Thank you.”
“How…” The word comes out as barely a squeak. Martlet coughs. “How did that happen?”
Clover touches his shoulder. “Monster food heals me. Other humans too, probably.”
“I’m talking about the FIGHT!” Martlet coughs again. “They weren’t trying to hurt you, a-a-and you weren’t either! So how did it happen?!”
“Magic is deadly. To humans, that is. It will always cause a FIGHT.”
She stares. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“I—!“
“No.” His voice is hard. “You wouldn’t have.” A deep breath, then he goes on more calmly. “I did warn you this would happen. It was in Snowdin, after the insomnitot.”
“It would have killed me, if I’d let it.” That’s what she had forgotten. Neglected. She hadn’t believed it for a second and so she had discarded the idea. It’s just so absurd, the notion that casual, conversational magic could hurt someone, and without intent, too. And now there’s blood on the sand. Finally, Martlet sinks to her knees. “I’m sorry. I never, never thought something like that could happen. Never.” She blinks back tears. She will not cry. She’s not the one who almost died. “I’m sorry.”
She forces herself to look him in the eyes. His brow is furrowed only a little, but his eyes are hot with anger. His gaze augurs a hole in her. He sighs.
“Okay,” he says. “I forgive you. For not listening, that is. But the FIGHT wasn’t your fault.”
“But—!”
“NO.” He gets up in her face and raises his voice at her, then just as quickly recedes, pursing his lips. “Sorry. That was rude. I’ve been speaking over you, too.” He blows out an aggravated huff through his teeth. “But you need to stop. It was my choice.”
“If I’d listened, I could have done… something!”
“No monster ever listens, not just you. Not about that. Too strange an idea, like telling a human that a handshake is deadly.” He sighs again and the heat leaves his eyes. “I shouldn’t even be angry. It was natural to doubt.”
When they first met outside the door to the Ruins, Clover had said that he’d fought a lot in there, but hadn’t killed. She’d assumed that he’d started it. Had he tried to explain this to the monsters in there? He must have. And it hadn’t worked.
“I’m no good.” She laughs bleakly. “At all.”
“You are good.”
“…Why are you so patient with me?! You could have run me off when we first met, but you didn’t and I-I… I just… I can’t understand.” Martlet hangs her head. “It’s one screw-up after another, and you pay for them.”
For a good while, they remain like that: Clover watching her and Martlet looking down, spiraling deeper and deeper into dark thoughts.
“Martlet…” Clover sighs. “Look at me.”
She does. He takes a deep breath and plants his feet like he’s getting ready to fight.
“You want to be a better listener, right? So listen: you are good.” He folds his arms. “Accept it.”
Martlet can’t help herself: she snorts and then breaks out laughing, and it’s only a little hysterical. She laughs, and she can’t frown or berate herself quite so heavily once she’s quieted.
“Better now? It’s hot and I see some shade, so let’s go. Or I’ll force-feed you another compliment.”
She laughs again and stands up. It’s just so “Clover” to see an obstacle, even if that obstacle is her own self-loathing, and bulldoze right through it. She’s… still angry at herself. But she can move. She can get over it. She has to, because apparently she is a good person. She has no confidence that she can live up to it. But Clover’s confidence will be enough for now.