“here’s hoping i don’t regret this,” Sans muttered. “good luck, frisk.”

He teleported without waiting for their response. He was at his old sentry spot in Snowdin forest and sighed. The ceiling had been kind of claustrophobic before, but it was even worse now that he’d gotten used to the night sky. This wasn’t really a good place to escape to and think anymore.

Still, he could at least figure out what he was going to do for the next while. He pulled out his phone and thought about his plans that he was ditching. And the people he was ditching. Alphys and the tabletop roleplaying game group that got together every Saturday… yeah, he wasn’t up for that. He could do it after Frisk reloaded. Tonight… well, Papyrus would want his bedtime routine.

His gut clenched at the thought. Papyrus. How had he completely failed to think about…

He closed his eyes and groaned, slumping against the station. The idea of facing Papyrus in a dead-end timeline, knowing that their interaction would be erased… of seeing him like he wasn’t completely real, an “echo,” as Frisk often put it.

No, he had no interest in facing that. Not yet. He’d just… he’d think about other things and just not worry about this particular timeline. Leave it all to Frisk, hope it went well, and just never think about it.

Which meant he needed to make sure none of them forced him to face them. He opened up his voicemail and changed it.

“it’s sans. something came up. talk to frisk if it's urgent. i'll be away for a while, don't worry, it’s fine,” he said into the recording.

After that, he set up his phone to block literally everyone except for Frisk. No calls, no texts, nothing. The only people who existed in this timeline were Frisk and Flowey, after all, and he didn’t want to talk to Flowey. Not that he had his contact information, but that was beside the point.

He somehow felt the thousands of tons of rock pressing in on him from above, weighing down on him. He needed to leave. But where?

The idea of seeing the stars from a snowy place like this made him smile, and that was good enough for him. It was late summer now, though, so he’d have to go to the southern hemisphere. And if he was going that far, he might as well go all the way to Antarctica.

He laughed at himself as he began to teleport. When he ran away, he didn’t go by half measures.

Distance mattered a lot for his teleports, so jumping to South America was a bit much. Plus, he needed to have some way of targeting his destination. Being able to see it worked best, but only for shorter range jumps. Familiarity also worked, though it was slower - it took several seconds to “lock on,” as it were, rather than practically instant. That was pretty much the only reasonable way to do long range teleports, though.

He’d travelled the world these last months. He would always go to any location monsters moved to, for emergency response reasons, but also various other places just to have “anchor points” all over the world. Really, they were just convenient teleport spots he’d memorized, nothing special. He’d never been to Antarctica, though, so he’d have to figure that out.

He teleported to his room and changed his clothes for the journey. A benefit of always, always wearing the same eye-catching blue jacket is it made it incredibly easy to be less recognizable. Long pants and some sensible utility boots he already had, plus a mask that didn’t look convincingly human up close, but was passable at a distance. His eyes were the biggest issue, even from a distance, so he had sunglasses to wear on top of the mask. He did have some other jackets, but for where he was going, he’d stick out less with something more wintery.

He wore another random jacket and teleported to a nearby city to go find something suitable. Since it was summer, the winter pickings were slim, but he managed to find everything he needed. A thick, black winter jacket with an unreasonable amount of fur lining around the hood, which would be good to obscure his face. A dark blue scarf to wrap everything below his eyes, making his mask far more convincing. Some black winter gloves finished off the look - as long as he didn’t get too close to anyone, he should blend in with any crowd in winter.

He found that teleportation was a lot easier when he was in the heart of the spacetime rift, but it wasn’t too bad outside of it. Even when he’d visited the other side of the world. He’d gotten in the habit of eating heavily and packing his phone completely full to bursting with snacks before any international trips, and it was fine.

A few dozen jumps over the course of a couple hours brought him to South America. Santiago, Chile, to be specific. Could’ve gone faster, but he didn’t want to wear himself out. He had to hop on a plane to make it the rest of the way south.

On his way down, since it was quite a distance, he needed to periodically make note of teleport points for the return journey. He reached out his spatial awareness to the ground every half hour, finding a spot and memorizing the feel of it. It wasn’t really familiar, though, so he added it to his ridiculously enormous list on his phone. It was full of anchor points he’d memorized but didn’t regularly visit, with descriptions of locations and how they felt to his spatial senses, to jog his memory. Getting roughly four hundred kilometers in a single jump was fantastic, he really couldn’t complain, but on a global scale, it just wasn’t that much.

He found himself in a city called Punta Arenas, in southern Chile. An internet search had called it, among other things, a base for excursions to Antarctica, which was why he'd chosen it.

It seemed like a nice town. Pretty much everything was closed by now, but it was still striking. It was vastly more colorful than he was used to, which was neat, and the ocean in the distance looked nice from the plane. He’d teleported to the ground instead of staying around for the landing process, naturally. Disembarking was a pain, and he was glad he could skip it. Probably no one noticed, but he didn’t need to worry about that.

He didn’t speak Spanish, which wasn’t great. There were tourism places which presumably had people who spoke English, but unfortunately, considering it was winter, no one was going to Antarctica right now, even beyond the issues with the time of day. While the cold never bothered Sans, that was less true for his more water-based fellows.

Besides, it was risky actually talking to anyone. Monsters were exceedingly rare in other parts of the world and a lot of places were less than welcoming. Being a living skeleton wouldn’t do him any favours, either. His mask would help, but not under close inspection, and people got touchy when you tried to talk to them without letting them see your face.

He had passingly hoped he could just hitch a ride - teleportation made it a lot easier to get places he wasn’t supposed to go, like on a boat. With that option out…

An old memory pulled at him. There was a rather fun option he happened to know of, and it’d been a long time. There were some concerns, though. It’d take two human souls to gain flight, and three if he wanted it to be nice and stable. He wasn’t at war with anyone, though, so killing people just to get their souls for a joyride seemed ethically problematic.

And while it would all be undone, he was wary of crossing that line.

Buuuut… maybe he could go hunting for particular humans to kill? Not just random civilians, but people who had it coming? That could be fun.

He considered it as he walked the main commercial district of the town, his gaze flicking from person to person.

He didn’t happen to have any soul containers, and with absorbing souls, there were some pretty harsh time limits. No more than a few hours, tops, and he was out of practice. He’d need three souls in short order. If he’d thought about it ahead of time, he could have brought the containers, maybe snagged a soul or two on the way down. It wasn’t easy, which is why it’d taken him a week last time to get six - he had to actually be physically present and able to touch the soul at the moment of death. People rarely died alone - at least, not in places like hospitals, and commonly enough that he could expect to stumble into them.

Mind, this time, he didn’t have to worry about being all that discreet.

He did have to worry about the timing, though. Killing people was easy; knocking them unconscious, not so much. And he couldn’t teleport people against their will. Plus, finding people to target might be a pain.

He smiled as he thought of a solution. Not the most ethically defensible, but with the fact it’d all be undone anyway… eh, it was good enough. He made his way to a jewelry shop and decked himself out with a rather ridiculously ostentatious set of golden chains and the like. It was surprisingly heavy, and even with Frisk’s timeloop-based generosity, it would have made a notable dent in his finances, had he actually paid for any of it. But it was fine. He was planning on giving the shop their crap back anyway.

He was idly curious what alarm systems they used, but the ability to teleport items directly to his hand sidestepped a lot of security measures.

Now shining like the most blatantly obvious bait imaginable, such that only idiots would go after him - really, he was wearing gold chains on the outside of a winter jacket - he started wandering the worst parts of town.

He grinned to himself as he sauntered through the dimly lit alleys of the city. His chains clinked loudly in the night and he wondered how long he’d have to wait.

Not long, as it happened.

A young man in rough clothes came up to him and yelled something in Spanish, waving a knife in Sans’ face and pointing at the gold chains. Sans raised his hands, trying to adopt a meek body language and stretched out his spatial awareness, backing up. The thief pressured him and he stepped back into a dark alley, where no one could see anything. He grinned. Exactly where he’d aimed to go.

He knew almost no Spanish, but he did happen to know that the word “no” was the same in both languages.

“no,” he said simply, giving the mugger a chance. Seemed fair.

Without hesitation, the mugger lunged forward with his knife and Sans flickered to the side. He laughed at the dropped jaw of his would-be assailant and reached up, taking off the mask and pulling down the scarf, letting his eye light up just for the dramatic effect.

“¡Dios mío!” the mugger said, halfway between a whimper and a strangled scream as Sans casually put his hands into his jacket pockets again.

“i’m not really into this whole ‘getting mugged’ thing,” Sans said, summoning a pair of blasters to block off any escape from the alley. “more of a ‘mug of hot cocoa’ kinda guy. that would’ve made this go a lot better for ya.”

His words may have been lost on the thief, but his taunting tone was clearly affecting him. The mugger desperately attacked him a few more times and was pathetically easy to dodge, but was clearly beside himself in terror.

“hey, watch where you're swinging that thing,” he said casually, dodging another strike. “you almost hit me... oh right, you can’t. bad luck going after me, huh? maybe you’ll have better luck in the afterlife. man, i'm killing it tonight.”

He chuckled.

“a shame you don’t speak english - you don’t find this ‘humerus’ at all, do ya?” he said. “oh, well. i gave you a chance… time to end this.”

The blasters could be a little loud, so Sans just launched a swarm of bones. With another choked scream, the mugger fell to the ground, his life burned out. Sans knelt down and snagged the soul as it appeared.

The power rushed into him, rich and intoxicating, and old habits kicked in. The soothing, numbing grip of death-affiliated magic settled the soul and held it back from the will to resist. The surge of power tried to change his form into something larger and stronger, but Sans suppressed it. It’d have been fine if he were wearing monster-forged clothing, which could adjust with his change in size, but he had too much human stuff on. Another thing he could have addressed ahead of time, if he’d thought about it.

It’d been a long time since he felt this. Apparently absorbing souls worked well with his damaged core - it felt incredible, his aches, pains, fatigue, and hunger disappearing as the power flooded his entire being. He luxuriated in the sensation for a moment.

It wasn’t just physically that it was affecting him. The sensation powerfully pulled him back to old memories and he smiled. He felt like he could almost believe she was standing next to him. But it didn’t feel the same as before, to remember her like this. It didn’t hurt the same way. It felt like a happy memory to think of her standing beside him, rather than a painful one of longing, of wishing for her back.

Was it a betrayal to her memory to just be happy to remember her, and not long to have her back? To acknowledge how much he cared about Toriel and Frisk and that he was happy, in a strange and twisted way, with his life now? Not completely, not really; there was too much heartache and uncertainty to say he was happy with his life. Still, it was good.

Well, he didn’t have a lot of time to think. This soul didn’t have too much kick, so he could probably squeeze a solid two hours out of it, maybe close to three. That wasn’t a lot of time to get all the way to Antarctica, especially since he had to get two more. He teleported the cooling corpse to a nearby forest with a few hops and then went hunting again. Though maybe “fishing” was a better analogy, since he was playing the part of bait.

An hour later, he sighed. He wasn’t having any luck. Punta Arenas was a pretty small city, with only about a hundred thousand people. Movies made this seem like it’d be easy.

He teleported around town until he found a spot with free wifi and pulled out his phone. He had a goodnight text from Frisk from a few hours ago and he smiled. He thought of some things he might say, but ended up settling on a basic goodnight. He swapped back to a browser and did some searching.

Aha. Santiago, the city he’d flown from on the way down here, had a major gang problem. Apparently entire neighborhoods were practically run by drug gangs. And the soul he’d taken would provide all the juice he’d need to push some high speed teleports. It was nearly two in the morning now, but the soul kept him from feeling tired at all, and surely some gangs would still be active.

He screenshotted some maps and highlighted the worst neighborhoods, then started to rapid fire teleport.

Man, he could get some serious speed when he could abuse teleports like this. It was about three thousand kilometers, but he had the memorised teleport points on the way down. He was able to make the whole journey in barely two minutes. It was putting major strain on the soul, though. He’d need to grab at least three souls and let this one go - it wouldn’t last long under this sort of pressure.

Once he arrived, he checked his phone map and started teleporting off to the most dangerous places he’d found. It took several minutes of hopping around before he saw a likely looking group in a parking lot. They looked nasty. Rough clothes, tattoos, and muscle didn’t necessarily mean much, but the array of knives and actual machetes were a little more telling.

He went ahead and turned off his phone. Wouldn’t need it where he was going, but keeping some battery life would be good.

It was a dangerous game Sans was playing, on a few levels, but he couldn’t help but grin in anticipation. With six of them, that’d be plenty. He reluctantly let go of the soul he’d absorbed - it was already starting to fray a little from how hard he’d pushed it, and he didn’t want it to eat into the duration he could get from the new ones.

The aching hollowness and fatigue from the soul leaving didn’t last long, fortunately, and he hadn’t caught the gang’s attention yet.

He considered his plan of attack. Going for all six souls… that was iffy. The more souls he held, the harder it was to hold onto them. He’d gotten cleared for using seven souls, the maximum amount, back in the day, but it’d been a hell of a long time.

Eh, it’d be fine. He had an idea of how it might work out, but it wasn’t a big deal if it didn’t. Worst case, he’d have to let go of them and try again. Santiago did have a gang problem. Why, he could almost consider himself a hero with this plan. Almost.

He casually made his way over to them. It didn’t take long at all to catch their attention and they fanned out around him. The looks of confusion on their faces was fantastic - he was ridiculously shiny right now and they were clearly suspicious. But also greedy. After all, he was horribly outnumbered and there was a shitload of gold on him.

What could he possibly do against six magically-ignorant humans with melee weapons?

He chuckled beneath his mask. He wondered how many he’d get before they started fleeing in terror - unlike with the mugger, he couldn’t block off exits.

He bet he’d get them all. Best to let them get close, first.

They tried speaking to him, but the whole language thing was a problem again.

“don’t mind me,” he said with a grin that they couldn't see. “look how shiny and helpless i am. you wouldn’t be thinking of doing anything violent, would you?”

Clearly none of them spoke English, but it was downright hilarious how uncertain they were. Unlike with the mugger, he wasn’t pretending to be meek to lure them into attacking. The suspicion was pouring off of them. Didn’t stop them from surrounding him, and he kept looking at their leader. He wondered what his face looked like to them, hidden as it was in the shadows of his hood.

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After maybe ten seconds of tentative comments back and forth, they exchanged glances and lunged to attack him in sync.

Self defense was a great excuse. A quick timefreeze and he casually walked to one side. They were lined up pretty nicely. Should he toy with them or try to end this quickly?

He chuckled within his bubble of time. It would be fun to screw around with them, but he was pretty sure they'd break and run as soon as he showed obvious magic. He did take off the mask and scarf again, though. Those that survived his first attack would have a great reaction to seeing him, he was sure of it.

As soon as the timefreeze ended, he summoned the biggest blaster he could manage. The roar of its strike probably woke everyone in the neighborhood, and it might have been bright enough to see from space.

No point in holding back when he was about to get topped up, after all. A wave of exhaustion flooded him, but he pushed it aside - it wouldn't matter for long.

Four gang members were caught in the blast, and four corpses dropped to the ground. He didn't have a lot of time to grab their souls, but there was a little - he could still play around.

He grinned at the two gang members who'd been just a little too far to the side to be caught in the blast. They stared at him and started screaming.

Heh heh heh. The looks on their faces were fantastic.

The bigger one dropped his machete and broke into a full sprint. The smaller one fell to his knees, his hands clasped in prayer, babbling something. Probably begging for mercy? That was hilarious.

Nice of him to stay in one place. Sans teleported in front of the runner and launched a swarm of bones at him. He tried to dodge, without much success. His scream of pain as he died made Sans feel a little guilty, but he pushed it aside. They'd chosen violence first, and it was all going to be undone anyway.

He started absorbing their souls as quickly as he could, starting with the guy he’d just killed and then teleporting back to the others. He sighed with relief at the sensation of their strength filling him. As he did so, he glanced at the final gang member, who was staring at Sans in horror.

Sans wasn't sure if he should kill him. He didn't actually need that many souls anyway. Witnesses would normally be a problem, but what were the odds the testimony of a single gang member would cause any real trouble in the next week or so?

After all five souls were absorbed, Sans sauntered over to the last guy. He'd stayed frozen in place - he'd seen what happened to the guy who ran, after all, and he'd been left alone after begging for mercy.

But there was no sense in worrying about what he should do, not in this timeline. Fact was, he didn't need to kill the guy and didn't feel like killing him anymore, so he wouldn't, and that's all there was to it.

Still, he could have a little fun. He walked up to the guy, who was frozen solid in terror, and slowly reached his hand towards the guy's face.

His babbling pleas took on a new level of desperation as Sans moved and he was shaking. He glanced to the side, clearly thinking of running, but his face made it obvious that he still was thinking about what happened to the last guy who ran. He didn't know what to do and just stayed frozen, begging.

Sans flicked him on the forehead and laughed at the confusion on the guy's face.

Enough toying around. He dove into the well of power he was holding and used it to jump the full three thousand or so kilometers in a single teleport.

Damn that was cool. He'd arrived at the jewelry shop that had graciously, if unknowingly, provided him with some bait and he teleported it back into the store.

Having this many souls would strain at him - he was already feeling a little pressure, and it'd barely been two minutes. He felt them out and released the two most willful ones, immediately feeling the pressure fade.

His next trick had taken a lot of training to master. He allowed the soul-transformation to partially take him, skeletal wings bursting from his back, wreathed in faintly glowing blue magic. Almost looked like flames. He thought it looked pretty damned cool, not that anyone could see it to appreciate it. He flared a bit of magic for his own amusement, seeing the pseudo-flesh between the “fingers” of the wing glow blue before fading back into invisibility.

But the clock was ticking, so he had to move.

He launched himself into the air, focusing the magic to keep his body stable and keep control of his position. Wings weren’t actually hugely effective with a humanoid body - a lot was needed for flight, and wings were just one part of the package. This technique, especially with three or more souls, was less like being a bird and more like being a wing-guided magical rocket. He was a bit unsteady for the first few minutes, but got the hang of it. It was kinda like riding a bike.

He put on the speed, the vibrating sensation of breaking the sound barrier rippling over his body. He hadn’t had a chance to measure how fast he could go, but it was probably three or four times faster than he was going when he broke mach speed. He hoped so - at mach four, it’d take him about an hour to get to the south pole and while that wasn’t really necessary, it seemed a waste to go all the way to Antactica and not check it out.

Not really a subtle form of travel, but eh. As long as no one figured out things in the next few days, it didn’t matter. And hell, it didn’t matter even if they did. Who cared if he left a few corpses and a sonic boom trail in his wake?

It turned out, even if he could go staggeringly fast, he didn’t actually have a way to pinpoint where he was going. When the souls started losing their buffer, the emotions growing raw as they lashed at him, he decided he was close enough. He pushed it a little longer, finding an area without cloud cover, and then “crashed” at high speed into the snow, laughing at the nearly kilometer long arc of snow behind him. The defensive layer of magic from the souls was a nice treat and he sighed a little wistfully as he let them go.

His fancy new jacket was wrecked from the summoned wings, but eh. He flopped onto the snow and stared up at the stars.

They were beautiful.

It’d been kinda silly, his goal in coming here, but it’d been nice to have a goal and then to just do it. No second guessing, no tangling himself up in knots, even if it did involve killing a few people. Just making a decision and doing what it took to get it done… it was good.

And really, it was a treat to be here. He’d appreciated the stars at night near the city, on the handful of times he’d gone out stargazing with Papyrus. This, though? This was something else. The nearest city was staggeringly far - there was no light pollution at all. The stars shone with such brilliant, shining intensity, filling the sky with so much light that the snow seemed to glow. The air was so crisp out here.

It should be crisp, as it was probably around seventy below zero or something. Good thing he didn’t have any water in him at the moment. He smiled at the thought and pulled out some ice cream from his phone’s storage. It was full of different snacks - ice cream was often a good one for jokes, too. Something about eating ice cream at the south pole in winter really entertained him.

He ate it languidly as he gazed at the stars.

He’d come a long way. Figuratively and literally both. He’d changed - in some ways good, in some ways bad, in others… he had no idea.

At the thought of that sort of change, the memories of yesterday whipped at him again. But this time he just smiled. He was actually too far away for temptations right now. It’d take hours, minimum, to get home. And even when he did, he’d be pretty damned exhausted. He was actually safe to explore the thoughts without any temptation to act on them.

And he just realized this place was kinda perfect in another sense. It was night here - not for a day, but for half the year. A night of reflection, stretched out longer than it could ever normally be. A night that would last as long as he wished it to. It seemed fitting to be in this unending moment and gaze at the stars, to wonder, to hope.

The bit of extra LOVE he’d gotten, courtesy of the mugger and gang, was nice under the circumstances, too. Now that he was thinking about it, he’d dropped to a measure of four, after the events of the previous day, and the fellas from today had bumped it up to five. Five distinct layers of soul-stuff, like rings of a tree, on the surface of his soul - which had taken a lot of training to learn to evaluate. It’d go away when the reset happened, presumably, but in the meantime, it let him engage with his thoughts without as much pain. He could just relax here in this endless night, letting himself think and not hiding from his own thoughts.

He had a shit ton to think about.

Toriel’s and Papyrus’s words came to him. Did he love Frisk? It was an important question, but a hard one. A part of his heart still belonged to her. Another part was still fantasising about… something with Toriel. He couldn’t quite bring himself to want… to want…

He swallowed. Even with an extra layer of LOVE added on, it hurt. He smiled at a thought. It wasn’t the first time he’d struggled with reminders of… of wanting those things.

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“Your jokes are so bad,” Alphys said with a little laugh. “They're such dad jokes!”

“dad jokes?” Sans asked.

“Yeah, it's a human thing,” Alphys said with an awkward smile. “They, uh, that's what they call jokes like that. Silly, bad jokes and puns and things. Dad jokes. The idea is that all human dads start telling jokes like that when they have kids.”

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“Have you ever thought about having kids one day?” Lucida asked him as they lay out on the lake shore.

They'd wrapped up a mission and were sitting with a nice load of souls, but they needed a break. So they'd grabbed a few extra souls for the wings, flying to a lovely little spot to see the sunset first.

“yeah,” Sans said. “not for a while. papyrus is already a handful, and i'm not even in charge of him.”

“Yeah he is,” Lucida agreed with a laugh. “He's so cute, though.”

“heh, yeah. he's turning out to be pretty cool. kid is driven, i tell ya what,” Sans said.

“He is,” Lucida agreed. “But if we have kids, you couldn't coddle them that much. It's kind of ridiculous.”

“i know,” Sans said. “he's so happy, though. i never want to take that away from him.”

Lucida cuddled into his side.

“Think our kids could be happy?” she asked softly.

“i know it,” he said. “we'll be great parents. you can be the hard ass, and i'll sneak them out of the house to go on adventures. it'll be great.”

She punched him in the ribs. He complained, but broke into laughter halfway through.

“You moron,” she said affectionately. “I'd expect you to step it up, you know.”

He hugged her close.

“you know me, lucida,” he said. “i never fail to pull through.”

“It's what I love most about you,” she said warmly. “The most dependable person I've ever met.”

He pressed his cheek against hers, feeling her presence, her power mingling with his.

“i always do my best,” he said.

“You're going to make a great dad one day,” she said softly.

“maybe even better than you as a mom,” he teased.

“Wouldn't go that far,” she said, her eyes glinting with amusement.

----------------------------------------

“a dad? me?” Sans asked, with a well practiced laugh. “that's hilarious.”

“I know!” Alphys said, joining in his laughter. “I can't even imagine!”

----------------------------------------

It was a different Sans who’d laid by that lake, on that day. In some ways healthier, but in others, colder. He’d killed a lot more freely, had a lot less empathy for… almost anyone, really. He’d been kind of an ass to people who’d wanted to teach Papyrus more conventionally, lashing out at anyone who wanted to “steal his childhood.” He and Pap had already lost so much and he’d taken it out on a lot of people.

In other ways, he’d been better than he was now. Warmer to those close to him. He’d been better to Papyrus and her than he’d ever been to Frisk or Toriel. Or Alphys. Or… anyone, really. He’d been real with his feelings and wasn’t afraid of them. What he was able to feel despite the amount of LOVE he had, anyway.

But then, it was also a different Sans who had played off the dad jokes thing with Alphys. Those six years had been incredibly isolated, in a number of ways. He’d closed off from Papyrus, practically pinning him in place, discouraging any emotional development. Supporting him in play, but not in actual change, not in growth. Six years, and the only person who at all thought of him as a friend was Alphys, whom he mostly treated like a useful tool that was fun to hang out with. Her and Toriel, really, but he’d never even learned Toriel’s name, or shared his. He could have helped them both with their issues, on a deep level rather than superficial things like buying dog food. But, well, that’s what friends were for and frankly, he hadn’t been one. For either of them. He “knew” everyone and yet was alone.

All by his own choice, of course. Funny how much clearer that was now, as he gazed up at the stars halfway across the world.

He’d gotten depressed because of the timeloops he’d seen in the rift a year ago, because they’d made everything he did pointless. But he’d missed the fact that everything he did was pointless even before then. He’d been caught in a loop long before time powers got involved.

Weird to think that getting in on the time loops might pull him out from an endless loop where nothing he did mattered.

His thoughts spiraled around back to the question he had to answer. Did he love Frisk?

In a sense, it was a stupid question, because it was a stupid word. How had Frisk put it? There’s a million kinds of love, and they’d be happy with a bunch of different kinds? If the key parts of “love” were “matters to Sans more than he matters to himself, someone to whom he is deeply attached, who holds a measure of his soul, whose loss would tear him to pieces, someone he wants to spend time with,” then he loved a number of people. Frisk, Toriel, Papyrus. Her, still. Sort of - it’s not like he could lose her, so not all of the criteria exactly fit.

His family, though he didn’t even have a picture of them. Just a drawing and the words “don’t forget” scrawled onto it, useless as that was. It’d been a long time. Papyrus was too young when they’d died to remember them at all. But that’s what happened in war. At least those deaths weren’t in any way his fault.

Of course, when talking about being in love, it was usually meant in a way that included sexual stuff. At least being interested in going there. That’d limit it to Frisk, Toriel, and her. And it felt like just thinking that wasn’t okay.

Maybe his problem wasn’t in admitting he loved Frisk. Maybe his problem was believing that he was only “allowed” to love one person at a time. Couldn’t he love her, and Toriel, and Frisk, all at the same time, in different ways?

He exhaled.

But also, maybe it was time to let her go. He made himself think her name. Lucida. She was gone and even if he could somehow see her again… he’d changed. He wouldn’t want to give Frisk up, either.

He wrestled with his thoughts of her. He really did need to sort out how he felt about Frisk, and probably about Toriel, but it was all tangled up with her. If she could be summoned here, right now, what would he say? What would he do? What would he want?

He’d only regained maybe a single measure of LOVE from those damned muggers - it wasn’t nearly enough to make this easy. But he couldn’t refuse to face this anymore. He forced himself to think it through.

Almost everything he thought of hurt. Turning her away, being with her and Frisk both, abandoning Frisk to be with her again. But more than just hurting, it all seemed… wrong. So he decided to chase that feeling. What’s a way things could go that would feel right, if he could see her again?

Time passed as he gazed up at the endless expanse above him. Finally an answer came to him, a swell of emotions carried with it.

He would want to speak to her. And he would want to find out that she’d moved on. He’d want to know that she’d hurt when she’d lost him, that she’d missed him as much as he’d missed her… but only for a few months at most.

A shaky breath escaped him as the thought ground inexorably on.

That she’d gone on to find someone else who’d made her happy, these last six years. That… that they’d gone on to have kids, and he’d been as good a dad as Sans might have been. That she’d tell him about the life Sans should have had, and he’d be honestly glad that at least she hadn’t lost that.

That she wouldn’t even want to get back with him, so that there would be no additional drama in his life. Because as much as he’d loved her… things had changed. He had changed.

It turned out he could still cry, after all. Good thing his tears weren’t actually water, under the circumstances.

The night sky was still beautiful, even when blurry. Though it seemed brighter than it should be. He blinked away the tears and watched as glowing waves of light began to fan across the sky. Heh. A lucky day, that he happened to see the southern lights.

He gave his wish to those stars, to that glowing light. He didn’t want to go back. He just wished for her to be happy. To have been happy, and to remain so, for a long and wonderful life.

“goodbye, lucida,” he whispered.

He hoped that she’d been smarter than him, and had let him go long ago.

He needed to let go of the past and focus on the future. That was obvious, even if he’d refused to face it. It wasn’t easy but… well, at least the decision was made.

Lucida was his past - she was gone and he had finally decided to accept that, even if it wasn’t exactly that simple. Toriel had never been possible in the first place - now that he let himself think of things, face things… it was more that he cared for her deeply and she reminded him of the things he’d once hoped for. But he honestly didn’t believe she could love the person he really was. Not like Frisk.

And… Frisk.

The lights of the aurora waved above him, almost beckoning in their silent dance.

Why did he flinch so much at the idea of saying he loved Frisk? More than the love of a friend, or a best friend, or a best-friend-with-benefits. Those things he could admit to, easily. But more than that? He just… couldn’t.

Probably because, on several levels, he felt ashamed of how he felt. They were so much younger than he was. A huge part of him still thought the ownership thing was fucked up. And, even worse than just accepting that dynamic, he was ashamed that a part of him really enjoyed it.

A part of him thought it’d be best for Frisk to get over their attachment to him, to find joy in life in ways that were good and right. And not deranged.

His breathing stuttered at the thought. Yeah, that was the key, wasn’t it? The rest contributed, but that was the big one. If he loved someone, really loved someone, then he should want what was best for them, even at the expense of himself. To love Frisk, then, was to be a hypocrite, because what was best for them was not to be loved by him. To love them was to hurt them and hold them back, and so the more he loved them, the more he had to fight that very love.

Silence, save for the wind whipping up the snow into glowing swirls as the aurora was reflected. Stillness, save for that wind and the waves of color above him. Emptiness, save for the richness of the beauty in this stark and desolate land.

He didn’t think that just leaving Frisk was even remotely the best thing, for anyone. But… but if it were? If he did decide, absolutely for sure, that leaving Frisk was the right thing to do, was best for them… would he?

A surge of pain ripped through him as he realized he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He wanted them too badly. What they’d shared… it’d been too much, too profound, too incredible to imagine letting go. Yesterday, he’d let them all the way in, and that was it for him. In the end, he was too damned selfish.

So how could be possibly say he loved them?

He sighed. He’d had fun with the trip down here and unleashing a tiny bit of hell, but this had wrung him out again. And there was a lot more he had to chew on.

Maybe he didn’t need to right now. Maybe he could just drift in memories, bathed in the otherworldly green glow of the sky, for tonight. Fall asleep half buried in the snow, unable to be reached by literally anyone.

Man, the aurora was beautiful.

A core of love within a shield of LOVE, a core of warmth within a shield of snow. Time passed in that eternal night, never truly moving forward.