“I told you so,” Flowey said with a laugh as soon as Frisk came into their room. “And wow, that was so cheesy at the end.”
Frisk grinned hugely at him.
“Sure, and I’m in a cheesy mood myself,” they said. “Warning! People near me might be subject to random hugs.”
He moved further away and their grin grew toothier.
“There’s no need for that,” he said.
“There absolutely is,” they said.
“You’re being ridiculous,” Flowey said. “Nothing really changed. All that happened is exactly what I said would happen - that she’d forgive you if you framed it right.”
Frisk laughed lightly.
“More happened than that,” they said, sitting on the bed and beaming at him. “I made a promise, didn’t I?”
“A really stupid promise,” he said. “You promised to ‘be good?’ Seriously?”
Their smile softened.
“Yeah,” they said.
“You can’t even keep it,” he said. “You’ll be breaking it every time you make a mistake.”
“What I don’t see is how you misunderstood the promise that badly,” Frisk said.
They smiled warmly at his annoyed expression, full of the desire to hug him. It would annoy him so much if they tried, and they started to laugh.
Toriel had understood what she was saying. They’d seen it in her face. Frisk hadn’t mentioned that she’d said that phrase to them in the other timelines, but she’d clearly remembered from this one. It wasn’t “make no mistakes,” or anything like that.
It was a call to be good in the way that a child is good. To live a life of stumbling mistakes from which they learn. To face challenges without fear, that even if they screw up and cause harm, that they can learn, grow, and do better. To love without holding back, to face all the consequences of that, good and bad, because that is what it means to live.
It was a call for them to strive to be the best they could be, in all ways, morally and otherwise. To keep trying, even when they fail, because that’s okay.
Their heart twinged a little at another realization.
It was to be the opposite of what Sans had done - he’d given up. A few days prior, when he first accepted their proposition, he’d said he only tried just hard enough to not be a monster, and felt he’d failed even at that.
And Flowey had lost even the capacity to truly try - he’d lost the driving force that would give him reason to care. He’d been doing what he could anyway, mostly out of loyalty to Frisk, but he just couldn’t care.
But that was alright. They had determination enough for several people - they could keep striving to be good, for all three of them.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” Flowey asked, annoyed.
“Because you’re my best friend and I love you to bits, even if you drive me insane,” Frisk said with a huge grin.
Now that Sans took up a different category, the role of “Best Friend” was available to Flowey again!
“What in the world has gotten into you?” he asked, dumbfounded, and they laughed again.
“Joy,” they said simply, then made grabby motions for him. “Can I hug you?”
“No,” he said flatly.
They giggled.
“I think I’ll just leave until you stop being so… whatever this is,” Flowey said.
“You aren’t calling me an idiot?” they asked.
“This goes way past just being stupid,” he said, and they laughed again. “You’re being manic and really weird.”
They shook their head and grinned at him.
“Do you know how long this has been weighing on me?” they asked.
His eyes widened briefly in realization and then he chuckled, understanding.
“Maybe next time you should ask me for help, instead of letting something like this hang over you for years,” he said.
It hadn’t quite been years, but they knew what he meant. They moved closer and knelt down beside him. He gave them a suspicious look.
“You’re right, Flowey,” they said. “This whole situation with Toriel has made me realize that… well, I didn’t trust you enough. Yeah, you can be an asshole. A huge asshole. And I’ve mostly leaned on you for your skills in more pragmatic ways, like with work stuff, but… you’ve always been there for me, even when it’s hard for you.”
He huffed at them. They reached out a hand towards him in a gentle motion.
“Alright, fine,” he grumbled and they swept him up into a hug.
“Thank you so much,” they said.
“For the hug?” he asked dryly, as he was lightly crushed against their chest.
“No, you idiot,” they said affectionately, laughing again. “For Toriel. For always being my best friend, even when I was being too stupid to see it.”
He made an annoyed noise and they put him down.
“I won’t forget this, Flowey,” they said seriously. “I will strive to be fair to you, in the balance with timeloops, with Sans.”
“That’s not why I…” he started to say, and they laughed again, reaching out to touch one of his petals.
They were so soft.
“I know,” they said. “Thank you.”
He tried to do his usual huff of annoyance, but he was clearly feeling awkward.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “Let me know if you have any more questions about Toriel.”
With that, he dove his roots through the floor and grew semi-transparent as he pulled himself down, burrowing through the ground.
They smiled and laughed again, exulting in the lightness in their chest, as they stretched out onto the bed.
There was a lot to do! They grabbed their laptop and got to work. First, they would transcribe the rough outline of their conversation with Toriel as best as they could remember, to use as a reference, and then start laying out ideas on how to proceed in the reset.
Their heart sank a little. They… they really didn’t want to. The whole thing in Santiago… killing a few gang members wasn’t that bad. There probably wasn’t enough evidence to actually wreck relations between monsterkind and humans, was there?
Maybe if he came back soon… maybe they could find a way to make this timeline stay? It was kind of awful to think the lives of five strangers might be a price worth paying for the precious connection they’d made with Toriel, but… that’s just how Frisk felt. Those people weren’t innocents, after all. The article had made it quite clear that that gang had engaged in a lot of extreme violence, which was why it had been framed as a thing of bizarre justice. Even the last gang member had seen it that way.
They smiled softly and let themself hope a little. Maybe what they’d gained could stay.
A few hours of planning later, and they received an extremely welcome text.
Sans: heading back now. ill probly b under an hour. if u have time to get pulled away for a bit then be in ur room.
Mmm. They grinned at their phone.
Frisk: I’ll be here. I can’t wait to see you.
----------------------------------------
The soul was downright painful to hold by the time Sans made it to Frisk’s room. He wasn’t pushing for speed as hard as he could, but the hate and hostility it felt towards him was practically giving him heartburn.
He ignored that as he saw Frisk again, typing away at their laptop. They startled at the sound of his arrival, and had only just begun to smile as he grabbed them, teleporting one last time.
Only place that was absolutely guaranteed to be free of hassle was his old room in Snowdin, and that’s where they appeared.
“Sans!” Frisk said, sounding overjoyed.
The look on their face… damn it, he couldn’t face that, not when holding onto this soul. He turned away and let out a breath, freeing the soul as he did so. The hollowness and fatigue of its departure pulled at him, but he knew how to fix that.
“Are you okay?” they asked.
“later,” he said, tossing aside his bulky, ruined jacket, then looked at them.
What had happened? The look on their face… they were practically glowing. He almost staggered as he took it in.
They loved him. They loved him so goddamned much. The fierceness of the love and joy in their gaze, burning with determination, ripped straight through him. Somehow more fervent, more alive, more intense than he’d ever seen… as though they’d been weak before, somehow; wounded maybe, and had healed.
So much more than he deserved… All his walls shattered under the weight of that gaze.
He couldn’t move to them fast enough and found himself teleporting, crushing them with the tightness of his embrace, but matched in full by the strength of theirs.
He needed to be closer.
Another teleport positioned them both on the bed. He reached down and tore off their pants and underwear. They helped, tearing off their top at the same time. As soon as their clothes were out of the way, he pulled down his pants enough to free himself and slammed into them, groaning at the sensation. They were soaking wet and responsive - they’d clearly been thinking about his arrival.
“i needed this,” he said as Frisk moaned out his name, holding still for a moment to savor the feeling of being within them, their textured heat, how tight they were on him, their vitality flowing into him. “i needed you.”
Frisk let out a joyful sound as they kissed all over his face. He began to thrust within them, groaning again at how damned good they felt. He didn’t even try, and he found the soul connection forming - he wanted to feel them powerfully enough that it just happened. He wanted to feel them, to see them, more than he was afraid to be seen.
He felt himself fall even more at the sensation of their soul. It had already felt good before - rich, satisfying, with a depth of stability and certainty that was reassuring. But it was glowing in this moment, shining with something beautiful and golden that seemed almost alien, as though it were a long distant memory that he hadn’t quite forgotten.
It didn’t take long before they were cumming on him, crying out his name and he nearly let himself go with them. They’d clearly been thinking about his upcoming visit rather thoroughly, but he didn’t want this to end yet.
In fact, that might be a small problem. He couldn’t use their timeloop power, and he was tangled up enough that he wanted to be pulled out of his head.
Heh. Actually…
“something i’d like ya to do for me,” Sans said, rolling over and pulling them on top of him.
“Anything,” they said, gazing down at him with a smile that tore at his heart.
“i’m kinda in my head too much,” he said. “i seem to recall you learning how to do something about that.”
Their grin widened and took on a mischievous glint. He groaned as they changed how they were moving on him, their motions more forceful and intense.
“It will be my pleasure,” they purred.
“push me hard and take your time,” he said, gripping their hips as they moved. Fuck, they felt incredible. “when you cum, take me with you.”
“If we’re going to push things, then give me a moment,” they said and moved off of him.
He was tempted to complain, but instead he waited while they grabbed their phone and pulled out some pie and other bits of monster food. Eh, that made sense. It wasn’t much of a delay, anyway.
They climbed back onto him and took him within, moaning beautifully as he filled them. He’d already been a little oversized, as had become his standard, but with the food there, he let himself go even more, feeling more of their soul pour into him each time he was buried to the hilt.
With that, he relaxed. He didn’t have to worry about holding back anymore. Sure enough, it was scarcely ten seconds before they brought him to the edge and then did that whole numbing-and-ejecting trick to prevent him from having release.
The pleasure was mind-breaking - enough to drive out any thoughts or feelings of guilt. Awareness remained, and he soaked in the pleasure of it all. The sight of their sexy body, toned and tight, as they smoothly moved on him. Their soft breasts bouncing and jiggling as they rode him. The intense expression on their face - of love, and pleasure, and joy. The sensation of their body under his hands, smooth and firm, as he roamed and just took it all in, in every way he could. And of course, the sensation of his dick being masterfully ridden and squeezed in agonizingly pleasureful ways.
God, it was good.
He knew he was making things worse for himself. He’d tried to deny being addicted to them, addicted to this, but fuck it. In this moment, he felt like he was a lost cause. He was too selfish to love them the way he should and probably would never let them go, so what did it matter if he was addicted to them?
He resisted nothing, save the temptation to kill them. He embraced every lick of pleasure, touched them when and how he felt like it, let himself try to cum and be stopped by their will, soaked in the feeling of their soul… it was incredibly satisfying. Maddening, too, but still so damned good.
It didn’t take long before his desire for release grew to be too much. He needed to cum, and last time, it was pretty damned clear that his willingness to endure was way less than their willingness to do this to him. But it’d be a lot more fun to “fight” them over this than to just give an order.
After all, all he had to do was push them over the edge. And they were clearly struggling with that problem already.
It was extremely hard to focus, but he managed to wrangle his mind around as he started deliberately pushing their buttons.
For all their masochism and their fetish for intense experiences, nothing actually got them off quite as much as him letting them know how much he was enjoying himself, enjoying being with them.
They were pretty close to their limits anyway, so he just summoned a small swarm of bone shards, told them how much he was looking forward to them cumming on his dick followed by his own release, then then launching the swarm.
Frisk let out a torn scream of pleasure as the pain combined with his words to push them far over the edge. Scarcely two more thrusts into that deliciously tight pussy clenching down on him and he joined them, releasing inside with a satisfied groan. The wave of vitality enriched orgasmic pleasure flooded his entire being once more and he collapsed, losing himself to the sensation. Frisk flopped on top of him as well, panting happily.
“God that was good,” Frisk moaned out before settling against him, seeming utterly content.
“yeah,” he said simply, holding them tight to his chest.
It had happened again, now that he thought to look at it. Something about fucking them… though doubtlessly it had more to do with the weird soul stuff they were doing during sex… but it’d chipped away at his LOVE again. Not much, but a little, tearing away at his EXP.
Back in his heyday, it was known that focusing on strengthening emotional connections was the best way to grind LOVE away, and was a mandatory exercise for reapers. Getting to a LOVE of twenty was beyond dangerous for one’s sanity, and reapers would be pulled from the field if it got too high. He’d never gotten higher than seventeen himself.
But reducing LOVE was a slow process. It wasn’t like he could just spend a day with Lucida and his LOVE would drop. It took days, sometimes weeks, to reduce it at all. The fact that he could just fall into Frisk, in a few senses of the word, and immediately have it chipped away was weird. But then, he’d never heard of anyone doing that weird soul magic that they'd dubbed “phasing.” Probably because he was pretty sure it wasn’t possible for two monsters - only a human and a monster even could. And only monsters with the right type of pseudo-real bodies had a chance, too. Or maybe coherent magic of some kind, now that he thought about it.
They were both silent for a little while, simply laying in each other’s embrace, with nothing but the sound of contented breathing. After a minute or so, Frisk grabbed the blankets and snuggled into his side, arranging the pillows just so. They stayed like that for a long moment.
“I hope you’ve had fun while you’ve been away,” Frisk said eventually, then smirked up at him. “How was Santiago?”
He laughed.
“that was sent to you, was it?” he asked.
“You should see what the survivor said about you,” Frisk said. “You left one hell of an impression.”
He looked over at the loving expression on their face.
“it doesn’t bother you at all, that i killed them?” he asked in a low tone.
“I don’t know your reasons, but I trust your judgement,” they said, smiling. “Plus, it sounds like you picked some nasty people to kill.”
He sighed and squeezed them tight again.
“Speaking of…” they said, sounding a little uncertain.
“yeah?” he prompted.
“So, um, you were a little flamboyant, but it doesn’t look like there’s any concrete evidence, nothing that can’t be swept under the rug, and again, they were particularly violent,” Frisk said a trifle awkwardly. “Ah, so, it turns out that Flowey’s advice was really quite profoundly helpful and things went amazingly well with Toriel and if it’s at all possible, do you think we can keep this timeline?”
He flinched hard at that.
“seriously…?” he asked. “i thought it was bad, that you’d really hurt her.”
“I did,” they said solemnly. “And there were some really rough moments. But, um. I mean, undoing would mean not having hurt her in the first place, but where we are now is kind of amazingly awesome and… and… it’s real, you know? No artifice, no second tries, just cutting loose and being honest with her, and letting her judge me. I mean, yeah, I aimed to phrase things according to Flowey’s coaching, but… but I didn’t lie or anything.
“I lied to Papyrus, Alphys, and Undyne, saying you were on an emergency ambassador mission that I couldn’t share details about, but that’s it. But things with Toriel turned out… it was… it was honestly kind of beautiful? And, everything else can be fixed, I mean, it might be hard, but…”
Frisk trailed off and looked at him hopefully. He closed his eyes.
He couldn’t quite manage to speak.
“A-also, I, um, I did something, I think you’ll be okay with it, but I made Toriel two promises,” they said.
He looked back over at them.
“One, I promised to discuss the plan with her before reloading, so she can have a say in it and stuff,” they said, fidgeting nervously with their hands. “And two, um, it’s sort of a whole thing, but basically, I made a promise to ‘be good.’ To strive to do the right thing, to not give up trying.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
While he was murdering an innocent stranger to save some time and effort, Frisk was making an oath to someone equally real as that stranger. While he let himself be swayed into dark temptations, they were swearing to strive to be a good person.
He squeezed them tightly to his chest again.
“A-are you okay, Sans?” they asked uneasily. “You’re trembling…”
Part of him wanted to refuse to talk about it, but he remembered everything. The depth and stability of their devotion and their love. The little smile on their face as they admitted that they didn’t even know if it was possible to lose respect for him.
“long range travel takes a lot out of me,” he said quietly. “last night, i decided to do something fun which needed some souls. figured i’d get ‘em in a fun way while i was at it, and not too ethically questionable.”
He sighed.
“this morning was a drag, though. and about an hour ago… i just wanted to get back to you,” he admitted roughly.
He found it hard to say anything further.
“... ah,” they said after a short silence. “So you got another soul, but not as morally defensible.”
“yeah,” he said and sighed. “i let the soul go right as we got here.”
“So that’s what that was,” Frisk said. “It was weird.”
“heh,” he said.
That was all their reaction was? “Weird?”
“it was seven people i’ve killed in the last day,” he said. “and one of ‘em was completely innocent, so far as i know. just, uh, convenient.”
“I guess that makes it easy,” Frisk said with a sad smile. “Toriel would be furious if we kept it from her and she ever found out. And, if she had a say, she’d prefer to reload. What’s one great outcome to a relationship compared to an innocent person’s life?”
“i guess,” he sighed. “it’s kinda messed up how chill you are about all this. about me murdering an innocent because i didn’t feel like looking for more deserving targets. and how the idea of deceiving or upsetting toriel sounds like your biggest concern.”
“You almost sound like you want me to be upset with you?” Frisk asked.
He sighed again, the sound almost a groan. It took him a moment to respond.
“i don’t know what i want,” he said with a small laugh. “tell me your thoughts on all this.”
It suddenly occurred to him that it was a bit of a reversal of roles. Here he was, in a sense, asking them to judge him. Were they right? Did he want them to be upset with him? Weird that he didn’t know.
They paused for a moment, looking thoughtful.
“It’s a mess,” Frisk said. “I don’t know what’s right, I don’t even know how to look at things the right way. Is reloading ‘ending’ everyone - is there something morally wrong with it? It feels like there is sometimes, but if so, what is wrong with it, and how major of a problem is it? It sure as hell feels like a reload after a few seconds is meaningless and a reload after six months is monstrous. But just because it feels that way, does it mean that’s the case?”
They laughed a little and it was an oddly mournful sound.
“Fuck if I know,” they said. “I murdered everyone because I decided that it didn’t matter, that I wasn’t really doing anything wrong. In the process, I felt like the most evil person to ever exist, even though the whole time, I knew it would all be undone, that it would have never happened, that none of it mattered.”
They paused for a moment and took a steadying breath.
“It did matter, though,” Frisk said in a low voice. “I felt it at the time, though it wasn’t until later that I accepted it. I blamed myself for what I’d done - even as I did it, even as I was screaming in my mind that it was temporary. Continued to blame myself after it was undone and no one was hurt. And Toriel…”
Their smile turned tender, a dance of gentle appreciation in their eyes.
“In our conversation, she brought that to greater clarity for me,” they said. “She helped me to understand the way in which it mattered. Why they mattered, even though it was undone.”
They chuckled softly.
“But I couldn’t possibly understand any of that without living it,” they said. “And it’s not like I necessarily agree with everything Toriel thinks about things, either. But I sure as hell don’t blame you for using the opportunity of the loops to learn things - about morality, about yourself, about whatever.”
They reached up and stroked at his cheekbone softly, that gentle smile still on their lips.
“So of course I don’t judge you for that,” they said. “This is not an easy thing to figure out. And well… you called me on my crap before you left. I took the coward’s way out, didn’t I? I decided not to face it, not to decide for myself, not to try to figure it out. To just trust your judgement and let that be the end of it. To be honest, that’s probably a big chunk of the reason I’m like this.”
“you can’t,” he said, sighing. “trust my judgement, that is.”
“Too bad,” they said teasingly.
“heh,” he said, smiling a little at their joke, but a strange sort of sorrow had filled him.
It was sweet, but… they were wrong. They trusted him, loved him, believed in him, they would do anything for him, and yet, he couldn’t…
He hugged them close again and sighed.
“You’re upset,” they murmured after a long moment. “Did I…?”
“no,” he said with a rueful chuckle. “no, you didn’t say or do anything wrong. i’m just upset at myself for how unfair i am to you.”
“Unfair?” they asked, sounding surprised. “Sans… you’ve given me so much. So much joy, so much satisfaction…”
Their eyes glinted with some mischief and their voice was husky as they added, “So much… mmm… pleasure.”
They chuckled at that and he joined them. That was an understatement.
“In the last three days, I’ve gotten everything I want, it feels like,” they said. “Not literally everything important, like, I still need to figure out what to do with Chara, and I want Flowey to get a soul again. But you saying that, I feel like you don’t get how happy you’ve made me. How grateful I am to you.”
He closed his eyes and stroked their hair, enjoying the soft sensation. He could probably confess it all to them and it’d be fine. He could just tell them - a stabbing twist of pain tore at him at the thought - that he didn’t love them because he was too goddamned selfish to do it right. That he wanted to use his influence over them to keep them content in his service, to keep them his and never let them go.
He could. But how could he say the words, commit them to being spoken, when he didn’t want them to be true?
“i’m not as good a person as you think i am,” he murmured.
“That’s possible,” they allowed. “But I wonder where the mismatch is. Maybe I think too highly of you. Or, maybe I’m right about you and you don’t realize that I understand, and just love you anyway.”
He had to hold his breath at the stab of pain those words elicited.
“I mean… I’d predicted, way back when, that you’ve killed a lot of people,” they said, their tone low. “Flowey and I joked about putting bets on your kill count one time, but we figured we’d never actually find out so there was no point. We both figured your kill count was higher than mine. I knew, from the first day I met you, that you… well. I mean, you’d said that if it weren’t for your promise, you’d have killed me - that was literally in one of our first ever conversations, when I’d been actually innocent and trying to do good.”
They smiled at him tenderly as their words continued to lash at him.
“You spoke to me about giving up, when you were lost in Asriel’s haze,” they said. “Again, that was literally the first day we’d met. I don’t think there’s been any misunderstandings on my part that…”
They trailed off, eyebrows furrowing as they tried to find words.
“That you struggle, I guess,” they said after a moment, but then grinned at him. “And yet, you try. Battered and broken, giving up sometimes, but still. When I murdered everyone, you were honestly amazing.”
They were giving him more credit than he was owed. He’d been trained as a reaper, as someone whose job it was to kill. Not to win battles, but to take souls. That had given him an edge against Frisk, combined with the benefits from the accident six years ago, as well as his studies of timespace stuff, no question. But that was training and circumstance, not who he was as a person.
“i’m skilled at combat, and i made a bunch of plans based on studying you and the time stuff, sure,” he said. “but honestly, frisk, it’s not exactly brave to fight against something if that’s the only way to save your own life. i didn’t do anything special, i just had extra skills and tools.”
Frisk leaned up and kissed his cheek lovingly.
“So, then, the truth is I know better than you do, on that front,” Frisk said teasingly. “Also, don’t be ridiculous. You didn’t talk about him, but there’s no way you were just fighting for yourself.”
“heh,” he said, smiling a little. “yeah, fine, i’d have been fighting for papyrus. but still, fighting for your own loved ones isn’t special.”
They kissed him again.
“You didn’t just fight, you bonehead,” they said affectionately. “I have seen far too many monsters in their final extremes, in their last moments, when the end comes for them and they face it. You didn’t refuse to accept the situation - you weren’t like Undyne, coming at me with the expectation of victory. You didn’t run away and hide and hope someone else would fix things. You weren’t in denial, you didn’t put forth any pointless bluffs, you didn’t put in just enough effort to make yourself feel like your death wasn’t meaningless.”
Their eyes burned with fierce admiration as they gazed at him and it scorched his soul.
“You knew from the moment I walked into that hall that victory was mine, if I chose,” they said. “The odds weren’t just stacked against you, you knew it might be the case that it was literally impossible for you to succeed. A single error, a single missed dodge in a single timeline, and you’d lose everything. You felt hopeless - you outright admitted that. But you didn’t just try, you gave me everything. You believed you couldn’t win, and yet never accepted defeat.”
Their smile managed to grow brighter, their gaze yet more fierce.
“Because as much as you won’t admit it to yourself, you do care,” they said. “So much. You struggle, but deep down, it all matters to you. You just don’t want to face it until you have to, that’s all. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, it just means that you’re looking away.”
He was silent as he stared at the ceiling.
The pain in his chest was proof he cared, even if he didn’t want to think about it. So they were at least a little right.
“maybe you have a point,” he admitted.
“Damn right I do,” they said, and for some reason, they sounded incredibly proud.
Proud of him, presumably.
They shouldn’t be proud of him, they needed to understand…
“i’m too selfish to love you,” he said, surprised to hear the words emerging from his mouth.
He had been thinking they needed to understand, and apparently that’s now what was happening.
Whatever.
He couldn’t look at them as he said this.
“i know what love is, i know what’s right, and this isn’t,” he said bitterly. “fact is, frisk, how i feel about you… after everything that’s happened, i just want to do whatever it takes to keep you for myself, even if it hurts you, holds you back. i feel like i don’t want you to heal, if it means you’d…”
He cut off, his throat tight. He felt warmth on his cheek again, the soft press of lips against his pseudo-flesh, and pain lashed at him. They shouldn’t…
“People can simultaneously want cookies and also to lose weight,” Frisk said, their tone light, teasing, happy, and amused, as though he hadn’t just admitted to doing wrong by them. “Contradictory desires are normal. I think a part of you wants to hold on no matter what - and that’s bringing me no small amount of joy, might I add - but if I wanted to change in a way that would make this end, hard as that is to imagine? I have no doubts, Sans. You would encourage me and you would let me go, even if it was hard.”
“i don’t know if that’s true,” he said.
“I do,” they said with a laugh, the sound rich with joy and love, the sound echoing in his chest in ways both healing and hurting. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t want to change. So don’t worry about it. Hold on as tight as you like.”
He smiled a little and squeezed them close.
“i know you’ve got reason to see things the way you do,” he said. “at the same time, i know my own mind. i want to be better than i am, but the fact is…”
He couldn’t find the words.
“Fact is, you want to use me for selfish purposes, even though you think it’s wrong,” they said, amusement thick in their voice. “You killed some people for fun, and killed someone else for convenience, in a dead timeline, despite the intense hostility you hold towards Flowey for similar crap, showing some hypocrisy. You’ve hurt people, manipulated them, including your own brother, and isolated yourself to extreme degrees, shoving away everyone who ever cared about you.”
That wasn’t quite the issue he had with Flowey, but it wasn’t worth correcting.
“you’re not exactly making me feel better here,” he muttered.
They chuckled.
“And I love you anyway,” they said firmly. “I know all that, I get that, and I still love you. And it’s not just craziness, I fell in love with you before the whole genocide timeline. I didn’t know everything, but I knew enough. You’ve got room to grow, to heal, just like me. Stop hating yourself for not being healed and let yourself be loved so you can.”
He started laughing at that. It was strange since it wasn’t exactly funny, and he wasn’t laughing hard, but the laughter just kept coming. It left a soft, warm feeling in its wake that he didn’t want to face, didn’t want to name, and yet soaked in the sensation of it anyway. The laughter faded, but the warmth remained.
“i’m going to ask something of you that you don’t want to do,” he said.
“Anything,” they said, looking at him intensely.
He smiled.
“i figured,” he said. “but what i want breaks against the whole reason you’re devoted to me in the first place, so it’s kind of an asshole thing to do to you.”
They blinked and looked uncertain.
“figuring out what’s right, knowing what to do…” he sighed. “i can’t do it on my own. i need your help.”
Their gaze softened and they smiled.
“I can’t promise to be any good at it,” they said with a little laugh. “But I will try. I think we’ll both need help, really. There’s Toriel, Papyrus…”
“not flowey,” Sans said and Frisk laughed.
“Nah, he’d actually be great for some things,” they said. “He’s got some interesting perspectives. Like, he doesn’t care about murder, but he’s seriously annoyed by hypocrisy.”
“figures,” Sans said with a laugh. “so he’d probably judge me for today.”
Frisk grinned, looking deeply amused.
“He wouldn’t care about you killing those people,” they said. “You could kill as many as you like. He’d be all over the idea of you being a hypocrite, though - he wants to convince me of how awful you are. He really resents you for how much you’ve killed him, how brutal and hostile you were, especially back in the beginning when he tried to be nice.”
Sans chuckled a little.
“gotta admit, my plan wasn’t exactly peaceful, when i first saw the timeline reports a year ago,” he said. “i figured whatever caused it could just be killed and that’d fix the problem. and if no one knew…”
Frisk giggled at that.
“Apparently, you’d also kill him for being Alphys’ experimental flower,” they said.
“makes sense,” he said. “i mean, a soulless creature like that is dangerous, and i wouldn’t have wanted anything to upset alphys. she wasn’t exactly having a great time, with the amalgamates and everything.”
“It sounds like he has a point, that you were being unfair to him,” Frisk said, a little caution in their voice. “I totally get why, of course - I’ve wanted to kill Flowey myself on a number of occasions.”
He laughed.
“yeah, i was being unfair,” he said. “i realized it before, too. i changed my plans months before you fell.”
Frisk nodded.
“I know,” they said. “Flowey had a timeline figured out, of when he could make friends where you might spot him, and stuff like that.”
He winced. He hadn’t quite thought about it like that…
“i guess i can see how that would be the case,” he admitted.
“Um…” Frisk said, fidgeting a little. “I know he, uh, sometimes totally deserves to die, especially in his last decade or so - we’re guessing, he hasn’t kept track of time - but in his early years, he really kind of didn’t. Um, it would actually really mean a lot to him and surprise him if you, uh, apologized? For, um, that part?”
“he doesn’t even feel emotions, hardly,” Sans said.
“He does,” Frisk said. “They’re just… weird? Echoes of emotion. Nervousness, but until my genocide run, he’d forgotten what fear felt like.”
Sans snickered at that.
“Amusement, but not joy,” Frisk continued. “Disappointment and loss, but not sorrow. Fondness and appreciation, but not love, compassion, or true caring. That sort of thing. Does that make sense?”
Sans nodded and sighed. He supposed that he was going to be dealing with Flowey more, now that they were all connected through the timeloops. So he probably would need to figure out a way to work with him.
“you worked with him a lot with these loops, haven’t you?” Sans asked.
Frisk smiled a little.
“Yeah,” they said. “Usually straightforward, pragmatic things, but in the last month, I’ve talked to him more. You’d said you didn’t want to know how we handled ambassador business in the dead-end timelines, and Flowey really enjoyed helping with that sort of thing.”
“i bet,” Sans said with a smile.
As much as he didn’t like the little weed, he had to admit, he did get a twisted sort of amusement at the idea of siccing him on some of the more annoying politicians. On the people trying to oppose things like monsters being allowed to visit places or have other rights.
Hell, he might even have Flowey to blame for how smoothly things had gone, come to think of it. Frisk was the official ambassador, but they were also practically compulsively honest, kind, and could be naive at times. He could see real politicians eating them alive. Flowey, though… especially with the sort of shit they could get up to with the resets…
“now that i’m in the loops, i probably should know,” he said. “how bad is flowey with that stuff?”
Frisk flinched.
“Uh,” they said awkwardly. “That reminds me of a thing I should have mentioned ages ago.”
“oh?” he asked, a little concerned.
“We, um, made a set of rules for dead-end timelines,” they said. “In shorter ones, I’d just text you a quick note of whatever relevant thing you agreed to - you’re always great about believing me with stuff like that, I really appreciate it.”
He smiled. Yeah, if he got a text from them saying that his alternate self agreed to something, he’d just go along with it, as long as he didn’t have to do anything himself. Even from the day they’d met, once he realized how their power worked.
“lemme guess,” he said. “the rules we agreed on let him be a piece of work.”
“Uh, yeah,” they said. “He’s not allowed to take over the time power with souls, and uh, you never were okay with him getting souls at all, actually. He’ll be kind of pissed about you getting the souls you did.”
He had to admit, that made sense.
“He probably has played around with souls, to be honest,” they said. “The power is mental enough that I bet he could sort of mentally ‘step back,’ if you will, and not interfere in my use of the power. He could just not mention it to me, and I’d never know.”
Sans would be surprised if Flowey hadn’t done so. He figured Frisk had just not asked, and neither had his other selves. Easiest to just not think about it.
“Basically, a lot of limits were removed from you both,” they said. “Unless he was helping me in the context of my work, in which case you left him alone, you were allowed to kill him if he did anything that he could predict would piss you off. If you did, he wasn’t allowed to retaliate at all. He also was generally not allowed to start crap with you - not that he wanted to.
“But you agreed to not look into his stuff, into his activities. That you’d know full well that he was probably doing, uh, morally questionable things, and you’d just agree to look the other way, unless whatever he did wasn’t really ignorable. He kills some random people, sure; he kills Papyrus, and you wreck him.”
He nodded.
“have i killed him since coming to the surface?” he asked.
“Not that I know of,” they said. “He’d gotten good at avoiding your attention, so while I haven’t asked, I doubt it.”
He nodded in agreement. He hadn’t even seen Flowey at all until Frisk had pushed the loops far too hard in that one trial a few months ago, and other than him occasionally appearing in pictures with Frisk in the news, hadn’t seen him once, outside of the context of those trials.
“So, um,” they said, scratching at their head awkwardly. “Sometimes, he’d suggest that he handle information gathering, and I’d be better off not knowing, so, um, I would agree? And then we’d reload and he’d tell me what he learned and we’d use that for whatever purpose? So I actually don’t really know how bad it was, and I probably don’t want to.”
“and you never told me any of that, because i said i didn’t want to know how you handled the work stuff,” Sans mused.
“Yeah,” they said.
“you’ve used the loops more than i’d realized, haven’t you?” he asked.
They nodded.
“I’d talk to you about it once I realized I needed to loop,” they said. “Which meant we were already in the dead timeline, so you don’t remember. We’ve had that conversation a bunch, maybe once every couple of weeks. But I’d only need to talk to you about it once per situation, and then I’d either just keep reloading without mentioning it, or text you quickly what you’d agreed to, if necessary.”
“and then never mentioned it in the true timeline,” he said.
“It just never came up?” they said. “You didn’t want to talk about work stuff, so I didn’t want to bother you. And I was usually tired and fed up with it by the time we were satisfied that we didn’t need to change things again.”
“and the alarm app - how often do you deal with that?” Sans asked.
“More ever since Undyne found out about the loops,” Frisk said with a dry laugh. “But maybe a couple dozen times since we put it in place, tops?”
He drummed his fingers over their arm, thinking.
“and now i’ll be aware of all of that,” he muttered. “weird to think that before, it didn’t mean anything to me. i wouldn’t even notice.”
“And now it’s going to be this huge thing,” Frisk said with a laugh. “I already generally tell you when I’m going to save, but now, it’ll be extra important to keep track of what you’re doing, and to make sure I always mention it.”
He nodded distantly. Before, if they’d saved before his game with Alphys and Undyne and the group, he’d have just unknowingly replayed it however many times - everyone having fun and no idea it was repeating. Now, there was no way. He’d want to ditch them, because repeating would take all the fun out of it.
And hell, if it were an emergency with the alarm app, he wouldn’t even have forewarning. He might have to repeat conversations, games, comedy routines, all sorts of things, trying to imitate or improve on what he’d done the first time around.
In other words, he had managed to completely fail to consider the downsides of remembering the resets.
Whatever. He’d figure it out, it’d be fine. He had a great memory and most of his interactions were artifice of some kind or another anyway. Dealing with annoyances was nothing compared to the existential dread of knowing his existence, his very self, was just going to be erased and lost over and over and over again.
“we’ll figure it out,” he said. “worst case, it takes a few tries, right?”
They laughed and beamed at him.
“i think i’d like more time before resetting,” he said. “but do you have a plan with toriel?”
“Not yet,” they said, frowning. “We’re planning to discuss tomorrow. She wants to try to come up with her own plan, too, and we’ll compare ideas.”
“huh,” he said. “hadn’t thought you’d get her to do it.”
“It was her idea!” they protested and he laughed. “Also, uh, if you’re wanting extra time anyway, Flowey was kinda hoping to extend it to a week from Thursday?”
“why?” he asked.
“... to be honest, I’m often afraid to ask Flowey that question,” they admitted sheepishly. “It might be just money-related, though. We’re still mostly using the information from the long reset - we memorized a list of useful tidbits till December - but it’s not like we could bring notes with us. It’s good to take advantage when the opportunity comes up.”
He nodded. Another four months of foreknowledge to go.
“if you think it’s a good idea to wait till then, i don’t care,” he said.
That wasn’t really true. The thought of Papyrus twisted in his stomach. If he hadn’t remembered, this version of Papyrus would have still had a brother. And now…
“but i don’t want to think about anything right now,” he said.
“Then let’s relax and not think for a while,” Frisk said, smiling and snuggling up against his side.
He laughed at that. What the hell, why not. Nothing really mattered in this timeline, Frisk wasn’t even slightly upset with him for what he’d done, and things with Toriel were going to work out great.
He had nothing to worry about. With Frisk’s warmth pressing in his side, his body and soul brimming with strength, and his mind in a pleasant haze of satisfaction, he could almost even believe that.