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You tell yourself that there’s nothing from the Underground that you want to bring to the surface with you. Most of your belongings had been borrowed from Asriel, after all, and you know the Dreemurrs likely took them with them when they moved out themselves. There’s only one thing you’d bring with you if you could, but it’s not something that can easily be moved, so you resolve to let it go.
But then you actually move into the new house and catch sight of the ratty-looking backyard. When you do, you find yourself immediately thinking this is going to be mine, and then something somewhere deep inside of you decides that if you cannot bring the royal garden with you, you’ll just have to make it yourself.
Winter melts away, leaving behind mud and slush and the faint, persistent stench of rotting things that had been hidden by snow. It’s only when summer gradually begins to creep along that the world finally turns into something beautiful.
That is when you start.
Cleaning up comes first. It takes an embarrassingly long time, more because of your own shitty stamina than the state of the backyard itself (although the yard is admittedly pretty gross). There’s only so much overgrowth someone as frail as you can clear out at a time, after all.
Toriel and Frisk both offer to help, but you refuse. “You won’t know what you’re doing,” you scoff, as though you yourself have even the slightest clue. “You’ll just mess everything up.”
(Your actual rationale: that Toriel had not worked in the garden, that Frisk had not been there at all, and that if you’re going to rebuild what you'd ruined, you need to keep everything the same.)
You work alone, albeit occasionally with company; for although you’re insistent that nobody should help you, Toriel and Frisk often join you in the backyard anyway, watching from the blanket they have spread out and occasionally reminding you to take breaks. You do so reluctantly, more tempted by the raspberry lemonade they offer than by any personal desire to rest, but you suppose they’re right about needing to pace yourself. Not that you’ll admit it.
Despite your determination to ready the yard alone, you’d have probably let Asriel help if he’d shown any inclination to. Yet he avoids your emerging garden completely, and although you can’t really blame him, it is a little disappointing. After all, you still remember being kids and having weeding competitions in the carrot patch. What good is your new garden if you can’t bring your fondest memories of the old one with you?
But you won’t let that stop you.
As you work, moving rocks and collecting litter, you dream. You dream of sitting out among the trees when the sun is high in summer, breathing deeply of the clean, sweet air and eating homegrown strawberries. You dream of bringing others gifts of vegetables and herbs, showing off your calloused, soil-stained hands as proof that you’ve been taking care of something. You dream of seeing Asgore, offering him tea brewed from the plants you’ve grown yourself and having him call it delicious.
With every daydream, you become more and more determined to succeed. Fortunately, cleaning up requires no particular skill, and even though you’re not very strong, you have a tidy backyard soon enough.
You spend a long time contemplating what you’re going to plant. The old garden had tea roses and shrubbery and ivy and you want everything, but as loathe as you are to admit it, you have limits. If this garden is truly going to be an independent project (if Asriel won’t help, if Toriel can’t get along with Asgore long enough for him to visit), then you’ll need plants that you can manage on your own.
That doesn’t stop you from imagining climbing vines and hedges trimmed into elaborate shapes, but you guess it’s unrealistic to fantasize about replicating the entire royal garden in a single suburban backyard.
It’s Toriel who suggests that you divide it. She does so under the guise of asking you a favour, requesting that you allow her a small patch of land to grow things like carrots and lettuce in. You pretend to be annoyed, but give in fairly quickly; you have your pride, but you also know that you can’t possibly maintain the entire things yourself.
Besides, you desperately want there to be vegetables, because...well, because.
As for yourself, you’ll stick with flowers for now. Simple ones. Ones that are willing to grow. Ones that even you can’t fuck up.
When you and Asriel and Frisk visit Asgore for the weekend, he beams with pride upon hearing about your project. He sends you home with more packets of bulbs and seeds than you know what to do with and you privately resolve to see every last one of them bloom even if it kills you.
It’s around then that Asriel finally comes around. You suspect it has less to do with him finally being ready than it does with him being jealous of the way the rest of you are bonding, but you don’t really care. You’re just happy about him agreeing to go to the garden centre with you.
But when you arrive, Asriel starts acting kind of strange. With a funny look in his eyes, he tells you that one flower is too depressed to grow, that another will be lonely on its own, that this one desperately wants to be chosen and please, Chara, don’t leave it behind.
You wonder if maybe asking him to come was a mistake. You wonder if maybe Asriel really can’t be a part of your garden, no matter how much you want him.
In the end, you simply smile and follow his advice, trying to ignore your doubts. Together, you choose an array of flowers to be transplanted, carrying them home in a wagon procured for that very purpose.
None of them are flowers that you’d planned on getting. You’d had a vision, albeit a somewhat blurry one, but you’d found it very hard to say no when Asriel looked to be on the verge of tears over the fate of the delphiniums.
(If only you weren’t so sentimental.)
You hold Asriel’s hand very, very tightly all the way home. Then, when you’re about halfway there, he says, “I don’t know if I can help you with the garden very much.”
It stings to hear him say it. Some childish part of you is still daydreaming about replicating days gone by, days in which Toriel would read aloud while Asgore watered plants and you and Asriel hunted bugs among the vegetables, and you’d been hoping he would play along.
Still, even you can be tactful sometimes, and so you simply say, “Okay.”
Asriel looks relieved. You add, “You have to sit outside with me sometimes, though. Even if you’re not helping.”
Asriel nods and you give his hand a little squeeze. He squeezes back.
The day you finally begin to plant is fresh and innocent. The blue sky above is streaked with clouds and the warm breeze carries the scent of summer. You feel as though anything you plant today will likely grow to be at least a hundred feet tall, and so you begin your work with a gusto.
On her side of the yard, Toriel hoes careful vegetable rows. On yours, you pat seeds and bulbs into the little mounds of earth, silently willing them to sprout soon. You want to see them reach towards the sun. You won’t allow for failure.
Frisk drifts between the two of you, humming a little song that you think might be about the ladybugs they’re playing with. When you stop to catch your breath, they appear beside you, signing questions about what and why you’re planting, endlessly curious as always. To appease them, you give them one of the seed packets Asgore had given you and show them where to plant. They let the seeds scatter and you imagine them growing into something wild there beside your careful rows. You think Asgore would probably be pleased.
Asriel sits quietly in the shade of a tree, eyes fixed on you as he doodles something in his sketchbook. Occasionally, he stands, wandering over towards you and brushing a finger against a leaf or poking one of your dirt mounds before silently returning to his tree. You try not to worry about it too much. You told him that you wouldn’t actually be mad if he needed to go inside and you have to trust that he believed you.
Asriel aside, planting is wonderfully comforting. Your hands in the soil, the ache in your back, the dirt beneath your fingernails—all of it speaks to your determination to make something good happen. It’s a familiar, comfortable feeling that makes you work more carefully than you might have otherwise. You’re used to being clumsy when it comes to important things like this—to having things go wrong, to fumbling and making dumb mistakes that end up wrecking everything, but for once you work slowly, thoughtfully, hoping that it will all pay off in the end.
If it doesn’t, you’re going to burn the entire garden down.
Still, you’re pretty sure it will.
It’s only fair, isn’t it? Like a trade. You sacrifice your cleanliness and comfort, and in exchange, you’re given a new kind of comfort, both in the beautiful result and in the satisfaction of a job well done.
“I am proud of you,” Toriel says when the sun begins to set, painting the evening gold and prompting her to declare it time to stop. “It is heartening to see how dedicated you are. I am sure your garden will be beautiful.”
She smiles at you. You smile back, saying nothing.
Of course, getting the plants into the ground isn’t the end of it. There’s still watering and weeding and pest control to be done, meaning long afternoons spent kneeling in the flower beds and destroying intruders.
Still, there’s something oddly satisfying about tugging up weeds and picking off beetles and caterpillars. You think it has to do with taking the initiative to protect your garden—you’re not content with merely watering and hoping for the best. Instead, you're the slayer of nature’s enemies, defeating all who might prevent your yard from flourishing.
Asriel keeps his promise, often sitting outside while you work so that you can talk. He’s usually joined by Frisk or by a concerned Toriel trying to make him wear a sunhat, but one day, when he’s alone, he comes to kneel beside you instead.
He asks, “Can I help?”
“Knock yourself out,” you say, and Asriel begins to dig.
You don’t have to tell him where to work. He makes no mistakes. He clears spot after spot with an expression of unsettling intensity, and when he catches you staring at him, he says, “They couldn’t breathe,” by way of explanation, indicating the small green shoots nearby.
You decide that this is probably yet another thing that you can’t fully understand.
You’re not sure what to do about it. It’s not something you can make better by turning it into a joke; it’s too soon for that. It’s not something you can ignore in the hopes that Asriel will follow suit, either. That time at the garden centre was proof enough of that.
Maybe all you can do is confront it directly.
“You don’t have to stay,” you say at last.
“Yes I do,” Asriel replies, not looking at you.
“Isn’t it kinda weird for you, though?”
You scowl as you say this, stabbing the dirt with your trowel. Being a good person sucks, you decide. It’s embarrassing and leaves you feeling guilty for not being a good person sooner. It’s easier to ignore things; it’s easier to keep them static, never making ripples.
“I guess,” Asriel replies. He drops another weed into the bucket. “It is weird, but...I dunno. I used to like gardening a lot. I still want to like it. I don’t want to have it taken from me just because of what happened. I mean, it wasn’t my fault, right? I should still get to like flowers.”
You nod. This, at least, is something that you understand completely.
“Besides,” Asriel adds. “It’s important to you. So I should help.”
“It is important to me,” you agree. Again, you think of the four of you in the royal garden; Asriel and Asgore and Toriel and tea roses and the days where everything was whole.
But then you think of a laughing golden flower and how empty Asriel’s eyes can be some days. You swallow.
“But that doesn’t mean it has to be important to you too,” you continue. “I understand wanting to be able to enjoy things that you used to, but...it’s okay. If you don’t want to be here, I won’t hate you.”
Asriel shrugs. “I do want to be here, though.”
You watch as he presses his hands into the soil. Despite yourself, you imagine them taking root, swallowing him while. A dull, heavy pain settles in your chest, right around where your heart should be.
But then, Asriel smiles at you, and for once, his eyes don’t seem very hollow.
“I like spending time with you,” he says. “So that makes it okay. Even if things are different now, we still have each other. That’s all that matters.”
You nod. Your throat aches a little, but you nod.
The two of you fall into a strange, companionable silence as you work, and gradually, the afternoon gives way to evening, signalled by the piping of the birds.
The summer that follows is a peaceful one, defined by heat and hard work and monsters trickling in and out of the house. Most of them have some odd contribution or another to make to the yard, such as Undyne trying to help with watering and accidentally knocking down a fence or Mettaton coming to collect snails on behalf of his cousin and getting into a fight with Toriel.
Somehow, flowers still manage to bloom in the middle of it all.
When the first buds open, you’re caught more off-guard than you’d care to admit. You knew all along that the garden you were making wasn’t very much like the one Underground at all, but still, your eyes grow more than a little damp when you catch sight of the unfamiliar colour patterns waving on the breeze.
Things really have changed, you realize. They change and they change and they just keep changing, never with your permission, and you wonder, sometimes how you’re meant to keep up with it all.
Yet the garden is still beautiful. It may not be the one you left behind, but that doesn’t mean that it can't flourish. And despite your belief that this was something that you had to do alone, a way for you to atone, other people somehow stumbled into it anyway, leaving marks but never scars.
Some stupid, silly part of you had wanted to rebuild the life you had before, perhaps as an apology to the past. Instead, you’ve stumbled upon a new life entirely, far brighter than you’d ever dared to hope.
You wonder if maybe this is what Asriel meant. Things are different now, but the people are the same. The love is still the same.
So it’s okay, isn’t it?
The Dreemurrs had brought you to life, and now you’ve brought something to life as well, with the help of them and everyone you know; your victory over all of those who ever said that you could only destroy. Life born from hands that thought they could only tear apart, fed by those who had never seen the sun. Creation from destruction, progress from stagnation. New growth. It’s a symbol, it’s a metaphor, it’s a goddamn cliche, but you like it. You like it a lot.
You can’t go back to how things were, but you can build something new. You’ve laid down your roots and you are ready to start growing.