The human looked down, their face full of shame, sniffling.
Sans watched them, his expression impassive. It was hard to hear how they’d fallen for his other self, and then erased him. Hard to hear about everything they’d built being torn down out of fear. And while he did understand, and didn’t even really blame them for the choice they made…
“I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before,” they said. “You didn’t mention it, either. Maybe because it was obvious and I was just being an idiot. It didn’t really… it just didn’t occur to me that I’d erased our friendship. That it wasn’t as simple as ‘doing everything over’ to get it back. That of course things would be different, that conversations would be different. It was there, as I lay in the flower bed that broke my fall, that I realized what I’d just destroyed. And that was the true beginning of my descent into madness.”
That was obvious. He wouldn’t have mentioned it, because of how obvious it was, and how sappy it was. That said, if he’d realized they somehow missed it, then he would have used that to try to talk them out of it.
But their reasoning wasn’t wrong, either. He’d have been unsure, in the other timeline. Were they doomed to destruction either way? Was it safer for them to do things this way, in the end?
They sighed again.
“See, it’s not like I was completely wrong,” they said. “With people like Papyrus - it was a good, strong, real connection, but it was kinda… shallow? I’d only actually known you all for a few weeks, at that point. With Papyrus, if I just repeated my actions, even if I didn’t get it exactly right, he’d feel the same way towards me, more or less. And it’s not like I’d stop caring about him.
“In fact, I’d barely spoken to most people, and the conversations we’d had were… kinda to the point. But they were intense circumstances, which is why our friendships deepened so fast, so intensely. I believed, then and now, that I could get all of those relationships back without really losing anything. With just some time and effort, and maybe a short reset or two if I screwed something up.
“But as I sat there in the flowers, I realized that wasn’t the case with you. I hadn’t realized how observant you were, not yet, not completely. Regardless, I’d interacted with you more than anyone else, and our conversations actually had been deep. I suddenly realized that the version of you that I’d grown to care for so deeply was lost forever.
“And worse… that he had asked me not to go, not to erase him, and I’d blown him off.”
They took a shaky breath.
Sans had to admit, that really sucked. For all parties.
“Why that occurred to me only when it was too late…” they said, and shook their head. “I’d been afraid, obsessive, and neither you nor Alphys had any suggestions on what to do about the source of that fear. I had an idea and had to do something, I felt like I had no choice. And if this was the only path that we could see, that had any chance of helping me learn… I’d been obsessed, I just couldn’t think around that wall. It wasn’t until I found myself in the new timeline, and I’d committed, that my thoughts could find themselves on another track. That I realized what I’d destroyed.”
Well, on the bright side, he’d learned some important things. That the kid was… well, determined. He knew that already. But not just determined. They’d latch onto things, intent on carrying it through, or figuring it out, and would get obsessive. They’d even miss extremely obvious things, extremely relevant things, in pursuit of that obsession.
In a certain, critical way, the reason they'd reset was exactly the same reason why they'd left the Ruins. They had felt trapped and had an idea of how they could be free, and it didn’t matter what lay past that point. Didn’t matter how afraid they were, how dangerous it was, they felt they had no choice but to press on. First with Toriel in the Ruins, and then with the other Sans, after everyone had been freed. They clearly loved both, and had turned away hard from both, because they'd seen what looked like only a single real path forward.
And it sounded like the kid’s feelings for Sans had been mutual. It hadn’t been romantic, like it’d still just been a crush on their end, but their friendship was pretty intense. And for all he knew, it could have eventually become more. They were a lot younger than him, but that wasn't the worst thing. And with the resets, he had no idea how long that’d be true, anyway. Well, maybe it’d stay that way if they were careful with the resets like they said they’d be, and especially if he could be brought in on them. The fact that Flowey could remember the human’s resets was promising.
“I… will be skipping a lot of the insanity of that timeline path, and will focus on my interactions with you,” they said, swallowing. “As best as I can. Basically… hoo. I’d decided to kill everyone, see if that worked. If it didn’t, I’d reset and try something different. I’d do whatever it took to learn.
“But it seemed to be working. By the time I got to Toriel’s house, it was Chara, and not me, that I saw in the mirror. As soon as I saw that, I committed to the path. I’d kill everyone, absolutely everyone, learn everything, and then fix it all.”
The kid thought their “descent into madness” started with their realization at what they’d lost, but he figured that was more the tipping point. It really started with their obsession with figuring out about their little tagalong and their power.
“It was so hard…” they said softly. “I stopped crying with the monsters in the Ruins, as the shield of LOVE started to form around me, walling me off. But at first, I cried with every single one. And then, with Toriel… god, Sans, I…”
They trailed off and swallowed, not meeting his gaze.
“She died in a single strike, and I was so confused,” they said in a forlorn voice. “But I think Chara resented her, and that bled through, since I was… so withdrawn. She condemned me as she fell, and I agreed with her. Numbly, I continued.
“Flowey was so proud of me. He’d known Chara in life and immediately recognized them, instead of me. He liked the idea of me killing literally everyone in the underground, then traveling together on the surface, killing everyone there, too.”
Well that wasn’t good. The more he heard about this little flower, the less happy he was with the thing.
“Then… then the Snowdin forest, and you… and…” they trailed off. “God, Sans, seeing you again was… I’d started screaming a little, inside. You started off exactly the same as the first time, you tried to draw me into antics, but I just… I couldn’t. I just stared at you, my face blank. It didn’t take long before you started, er, poking me. Like, you said that your brother’d really like to see a human, so it’d be great if I kept pretending to be one.”
Heh. That was a good one. He mentally high fived the other Sans. They gave him a shaky smile.
“It was hilarious, of course, and part of me started laughing. Another part was writhing on the floor in pain. Other parts were screaming. So the thing in control was… pretty much a blend of the shield of LOVE, Chara, my determination to follow through on my commitment. It was still me, at the time, I was still choosing my actions, but the disconnect to the world was really sharp. Like I’d said at the cliff, by the time we got to Snowdin, Papyrus described me as shambling around, and you called me out on being completely unable to emote at all.”
He nodded at that. Pretty standard as far as LOVE went, without specific training on how to deal with that problem. Especially for LOVE gained really quickly.
“Seeing you like that, seeing the distrust…” they said, their face twisting in remembered pain. “Right before Snowdin, you spoke to me frankly. You said that I’d be running into Papyrus soon, and if I stayed on the path I’d been following, that I was gonna have a really bad time. And then you teleported away. Blatantly, hiding nothing.”
Mentally, he sighed. The other Sans had felt bound by the promise, unsure of what to do, and so did his usual of just going with the flow, of doing nothing. Not that he knew what the other Sans should have done. Breaking his promise wasn’t something to do lightly, and with the timelines thing, it wasn't like the deaths would matter anyway.
And Papyrus… he would have wanted to try. Sure, this version of Sans knew that Papyrus wouldn’t stop the kid, but that version would have wondered. Hoped. If anyone could get through to the anomaly, surely it’d be Papyrus. And stopping them directly wasn’t the best outcome, since they could reset. They needed to choose to stop, and Papyrus would be better at that than him, he’d have figured.
Yeah, he could see why he let Papyrus face the kid, even as it twisted his gut.
“I collapsed to the ground,” they said. “Inside, I was weeping, and screaming, and raging, but on the surface, from the outside, I was just sort of sitting placidly, blankly. I missed you. I missed us. Our friendship, our connection. I missed you looking at me with a gentle smile. I missed your jokes. I mean, you were still telling jokes, and they were funny as hell, even if they were a little sharp edged. Which, I mean, was totally deserved. You looking at me like that… with the threat in your eyes…”
They trailed off and took a breath.
“I settled myself and convinced myself of my path. I couldn’t fix things with you without resetting. If I reset right away, I’d have not only lost everything from the first timeline, but I wouldn’t have learned all I could from this one. All that sacrifice would have been for nothing. I just had to follow through, kill everyone, observe everything, and then I’d go back and fix things, and I didn’t care how many times it took, I’d do whatever it took for you to look at me with a gentle smile again, that it’d be fixed.”
And he’d been smiling at them kindly a lot in this timeline. He couldn’t help but give them another soft smile, and their eyes sparkled with a hint of joy. They were still struggling with these memories, obviously, but just a smile had eased their pain.
“So I went through Snowdin, which had been evacuated. I stole what I needed from the store. Dust blew by with the wind sometimes. The monster kid was there, because they were convinced the evacuation was stupid, and I thought about killing them, but I just… they’re just a kid… I pulled back, they weren’t in my way or anything. Chara seemed ambivalent about them, so I just passed them by. I did speak with them, confused, and it kinda pissed me off that they disregarded the evacuation orders.”
They sighed.
For Sans’ part, he was just glad they didn’t kill the kid. So, apparently it wasn’t quite “literally everyone.” But…
“huh,” he said. “i really got the impression that the kid had stood up to you, and that you’d killed them.”
“I knew you were good, but how the hell did you figure that out?” they asked, after their face went through an impressive array of permutations.
“just the way you interacted with them,” he said with a shrug.
They nodded and chuckled.
“You’re right,” they said. “But that was later. They got in my way, stood up to me, and I… I struck. But Undyne got there in time, taking the hit herself. She died in one hit… and then refused to die, transformed by her determination, and kicked my ass.”
So the transformation was more literal than he'd originally thought. While, again, he didn't want anything bad to happen to anyone, he wished he could have seen that. Wished he could remember the reset… which, he supposed, was the same as usual.
“and then you did it over and over,” Sans said, making them flinch.
“Yeah, I did,” they admitted. “But I never ended up killing the kid. Never once.”
“seems i have a habit of being a little bit wrong with you,” Sans said lightly.
“No,” they said seriously. “Well, okay, yes, but in this case… I struck at a child with a honed intent to kill, fully expecting and intending for them to die as a result. Morally, ethically - I am guilty of murdering them. The fact that Undyne happened to get in the way doesn’t change my actions, doesn’t absolve even the faintest measure of my guilt.”
The hard look in their eyes gave him mixed feelings. They made no excuses and fully accepted what they’d done, which spoke well of their character. At the same time, they were bluntly and blatantly confessing to willfully murdering a child. Which, uh, was not what he would generally associate with a good character.
Still. With every word they said, every flicker of emotion that crossed their face - of which there were many of both - he was slowly building a picture of who they really were.
Normally, he’d not try this hard to analyze every little thing. It sounded like the Sans in the murder timeline had done so, as he would expect, but in the first timeline, he’d been more casual and relaxed. Sure, some observations, some judgment – he did take that seriously - but mostly apathetic hedonism.
He didn’t want to strip their interactions in this timeline of anything real, to make it nothing more than calculated prods, analysis, and manipulation. He did want something real - feigning friendship just didn’t work for him, and treating them like they were nothing but a tool was even worse. Plus, while he was absolutely getting the sense he could push them, that seemed liable to backfire horribly.
He did not want the already insane creature who could destroy all of time to lose their attachment to morality and things, and to him in particular - he did like the sense of control it gave him, that he had such personal influence on them. Selfish, maybe, but it was still reassuring.
And it did seem like they were positioned to understand him better than most. And with everything… well, he did feel like he could probably trust them. Maybe not trust them to be sane, but trust them to be in his corner. He wasn’t certain, by any means, but they’d have to be one hell of an actor to fool him. They weren’t just emoting, it was like they were trying to be naked before him.
As he thought, they continued.
“Going back a bit - Papyrus tried to stop me, and I already told you about how that went,” they said, their voice tight. “I just kept repeating that I’d fix everything, that it’d be okay, that it was temporary. One thing… that I didn’t mention… I heard Chara with him. They… they said that he was forgettable.”
Their whole body clenched as they spoke. Sans twitched at that, too.
“I was so mad at them,” they said, their teeth grinding. “I wanted them gone so badly. It sort of reaffirmed my course. I had to do something to make them go away. And this was the only path I could find that might do that. I’d kill Papyrus as part of my goal for figuring out and removing Chara, and then I’d restore Papyrus, and we’d be friends again and everything would be okay.”
He nodded again. He was really able to get into their viewpoint, hearing their story like this. It’s not what he would have done - he tended to default to doing nothing when he felt unsure. He’d have waited until the situation was critical to actually try to resolve it. Yeah, he’d have tried to do some experiments, some observations, but something major like this?
Even so, he found himself understanding. With as much as they’d died, with the depth of faith they’d gained in their own power, in their determination, with the depth of care they had for the others… it made sense. Combined with how dangerous they knew they were, and how an unknown like the ghost Chara could make for an extremely unstable situation. He did get why they felt like they absolutely had to do something.
Their increasing insanity from what they’d lost, from how much they’d suffered, and from what they’d done, plus having a psycho ghost in their head - that added, too.
“The warning you gave, right before Snowdin, that was the last I saw you until the Hall of Judgment,” they said. “I’m quite sure you were watching me. Wrestling with your promise. Probably trying to see if you could see weaknesses to exploit, emotional and otherwise.”
He agreed with that, but didn’t visibly react. He simply watched their expression as they spoke, as it grew more and more hollow.
“By the time I got to you, I was a shell of a person. I’d developed my skill in combat to a hell of a degree. I’d killed so many. It was barely me you saw there. I was inside such a thick wall of LOVE that I feel like I couldn’t have spoken to you if I’d tried. Not just failing to have my body reflect what I was feeling, with facial expressions or whatever, but like even an actual attempt to speak might fail. Chara wasn’t in control, it was still me, but it was like… like only the actions where we both agreed, those were the only things that I could freely do. So, I mean, I did say a little sometimes, but it wasn't me, it was us.”
Their eyes echoed with emptiness, surrounded with pain and guilt. They looked more stable than they had at the cliff, though.
“Seeing you, in that context, I…” they trailed off and swallowed. “I’d chosen my path, I’d committed. And you tried to talk me out of it. And it reminded me of how you’d tried to talk me out of going on this path in the first place. That last goodbye.
“And I stepped forward and you mocked me and were such a perfect asshole, in the best way, it was fantastic. Then, unlike literally everyone else, you attacked me first, without any real warning, and you wrecked me and I just laughed. It was so awesome, Sans. You were everything I’d thought you were. You were powerful beyond anyone else I’d ever seen. You were magnificent. And you killing me, killing the thing I was, was such a good and wonderful thing.”
They smiled at that.
“You saw things on my face,” they said. “Frustration was the first thing you’d called me out on, and I realized you were right. Chara was frustrated. Apparently, it wasn’t just a wall, but a transference. Chara’s emotions were now visible on my face. I didn’t really… fully get the implications of that, I thought it was mostly just because I couldn’t stand to be there, to be facing you.”
Their smile turned sad.
“And I tried again, and it was hilarious. You probably killed me a dozen times with just that first attack, like, damn, Sans,” they said with a grin. “But eventually, I managed to survive by the skin of my teeth.”
Their smile fell.
“Attacking you… yeah, most everyone had started dying in a single strike, but deep down, I was just convinced that it wouldn’t be that simple, that you were powerful and knowledgeable, there was no way. If you had died… I probably would have lost myself, in hindsight. But in the moment, I was just convinced that it wouldn’t actually be the end, nevermind that my intent to kill had been refined to a razor’s edge. So I didn’t stop myself from trying to strike you. And you teleported out of the way, and it was fantastic. And then you revealed things, you said things, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t turn away. I was mesmerized.”
They sighed and rubbed at their face.
“You spoke of the timelines, the reports, and I admit, I felt a little sense of… not quite betrayal. But I was upset you were willing to tell the psycho version of myself about that, and not your friend. Yes, I know, it was part of an attempt to stop me. That maybe I’d take warnings of the end of the world seriously, in a way that I didn’t take individual lives seriously. Still. I wish I’d known about that, but you were so tight lipped.”
He shuffled a little awkwardly.
“You spoke a little of what you’d lost, that you’d given up trying to go ‘back’ a long time ago. That shook me, too, but again, with a little bit of frustration and anger, that you’d mention those things to the psycho, but not your friend. Again, yes, I know, it was meant as a targeted strike on my psyche. That maybe if there was a sense of connection between us, a sense of shared loss, that maybe that’d be enough to reach me, to make me stop.”
He nodded at that. He did understand their frustration, honestly. But he was glad they realized it wasn’t personal. It’s not like he’d have been actually eager to connect with the psycho murderer.
“Still. You’d killed me several dozen times before I even managed to hear more than two comments in any given loop. The first time I heard you say those things, it kinda rubbed me the wrong way. The tenth time, I heard it in the spirit it was intended. I saw my friend honestly trying to reach out and find some way, any way, to make the madness stop.”
He scratched at his head awkwardly.
“And then, I slowly pushed you to the point that you tried the gambit of sparing me. As I’d said at the cliff… you called on the friendship we’d once had. I have no idea if you actually managed to get a glimpse of it, in our interactions, or if it was a wild guess, just another in a list of gambits you were trying. But whatever the reasons you had, it struck true.”
They closed their eyes.
“Everything I’d felt for you. The love that had started to grow. The realization of having lost that love, that connection. That last hug goodbye, the way your voice broke when you wished me luck. I barely existed as a sapient creature, in that moment. I was a raw thing of emotion. I went to you, my knife clattering to the ground. I didn’t know what you’d do for sure, but I’d heard what you said, that it’d make your job easier. I was pretty sure you’d kill me and I just didn’t care. I had to go to you, to lay myself on your mercy.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
They smiled tenderly, lovingly.
“You hugged me. And killed me. And spoke to me as I bled out, painfully dying. It felt… real. Like maybe the stuff you’d said before had been a gambit, but mocking me as I died, and then saying if we were friends, I wouldn't come back? That felt like it was one hundred percent, absolutely, certifiably Sans. No artifice, no mask, just the naked truth of how you felt. It felt exactly like here, in this restaurant, the first time, when your walls crumbled and you admitted you’d have killed me if it weren’t for your promise.”
They took a breath.
“That was the moment that I realized I’d fallen in love with you,” they said, looking away.
He looked away, too. This was really intense stuff. It was easy to get swept up in the story, to feel for them. When they’d spoken at the cliff, he hadn’t known them as well, it hadn’t been this… coherent of a story. They were just bleeding all over him, at the time, and he’d been reeling.
This, though? This was hitting him. This was making sense, in a screwed up way.
“So then I found myself at my save point, in the Hall of Judgment, realizing everything. Knowing that I’d fallen in love with you, realizing that I'd started to fall for you at the restaurant here, that I'd already loved you by the time of that timeline’s last farewell… and that I’d thrown it all away out of fear. Knowing that, even though you were trying to express whatever it took to get me to change my path, even kindness, that you hated me. Of course you hated me, how could you not? Hell, I hated me.”
The look on their face as they spoke… he could be pretty numb sometimes, from his own acquired LOVE from darker days. But he found his heart hurting, hearing all this.
“I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t face what I’d done, what I’d been doing, what I’d lost, the look on your face. When you spared me, you’d smiled at me tenderly, kindly, and the hint of what I’d lost… it’s a major part of why I’d cracked so hard. And I didn’t know what to do. I’d ripped in half. Like I said at the cliff, the shield of LOVE had cracked and I was collapsed on the ground, screaming and writhing.
“But there was something in me that wasn’t torn. There was something in me that had no doubts, no loss, no uncertainty. That wasn’t weeping uncontrollably. Something that wanted to stand, that reminded me of what I’d chosen to do, that if I just stepped back, that I’d learn more and wouldn’t have to do anything. I could just take it in and everything would be okay.”
Yeah, he kinda agreed with them that getting rid of Chara was probably a really good idea.
“I agreed, like an absolute idiot. But I couldn’t face any choices, none at all. Even resetting… the thought of facing everyone I’d killed, the thought of seeing you with that hope and cheer that you’d encouraged me with… I wasn’t strong enough, I withdrew from everything. You tried to speak to me and I just screamed. I wanted to throw myself at you and cry on your shoulder, but the only version of you that I could do that with, I’d destroyed by resetting.”
He nodded. He related to that a bit too much. Pulling back, disengaging, letting things happen around him because he couldn’t face the pain of it all?
Yeah. He understood that.
“It was completely Chara that faced you, when we reloaded. Sure, I felt everything, but I no longer made the choices. And that’s what I wanted. I just stepped back and stopped trying to hurt you. Instead, I just admired you. I watched you kill Chara, mocking them and tearing them down, again and again and again. I watched their frustration with you grow. You continued to try to call out to me, and it would still make me writhe and scream within my walls.
“But I wasn’t… you weren’t dying. We were just… dancing. I was learning about you and watching you be a badass, and you never even got hurt, and it was wonderful. I just soaked in my admiration for you. In my love for you. And just let myself feel it all, within the wall. Let it be unchained, let it grow freely.
“And you killed me so many times. I’d grown to appreciate battle ability, and you were just goddamned amazing, Sans, like holy shit. I felt a giddy surge of triumph every time I died, every time Chara seethed with frustration.
“But we got better at fighting. Memorized your attack patterns. Slowly, but surely, they pushed you harder and harder. You threw a final attack that wrecked us, it was amazing. And then, after at least a dozen deaths from that one attack alone, they finally got past it. And you used your ‘special attack’ of a goddamn pun, saying ‘here goes nothing’ and it being ‘nothing’ and I was just laughing. But we stood there, bound by your magic, and Chara still was intent on seeing things through.”
They sighed.
“And you spoke to me, trying to reach past the barrier, using whatever final emotional gambits you could think of to just make me stop. And then, you had nothing left to give. You stood and slowly succumbed to exhaustion and passed out. And Chara pushed with me and we raised the knife. And they pushed at me to make the decision, to attack. Because they couldn’t quite do things against my will. But I felt their anticipation, their itching. I felt they were so close to being able to take control, rather than being given it.
“I remembered everything, as I looked at you, passed out before me. Papyrus… how I’d killed him, how it was okay because it’d have never happened, and wasn’t the same thing true here? If I refused to kill you, didn’t that mean that on some level the deaths did matter, so what I’d done with Papyrus was actually unforgivable? That if I loved you enough to not kill you, that it meant that Papyrus didn’t really matter enough to not kill?”
Sans winced at that.
“But in the end, it didn’t matter,” they said. “Chara’s justifications. My commitment. My determination to see the path through. The struggle between the values of lives. The implications of my struggle to kill you, but acceptance of killing the others.
“In the end, it all washed away in a few simple truths. The fact was, I loved you and that mattered to me more than anything else. Even if you didn’t remember me, and I could never regain the connection we had. I might build something new, but I could never really get it back. Everything else was muted, anyway, by the shield of LOVE. Despite Chara’s frustration with me, I surrendered to that love, to the promise I’d made to you, that I’d fix everything. Didn’t matter if I ultimately died in the end. Didn’t matter how much I’d lost. Didn’t matter if you wanted to rip me to pieces on finding out what I’d done, to torture me into madness and shred my soul. Didn’t matter if you hated me forever.
“All that I'd been, the entirety of my soul, it burned away, leaving only a single thread of purpose, of existence. My entire self, reforged around a singular concept.
“All that mattered was that I loved you, that I was yours, and all that went with that - such as my promise to fix everything. A single note of stability, within the madness I’d become. It was hard to speak, hard to reset - Chara resisted with everything they had - but I did it… and the shield didn’t come with, nor Chara’s full presence. I felt everything.”
They were silent at that.
“and that was this morning,” Sans said after a moment.
“And that was this morning,” they agreed with a dry laugh.
He’d probably need to get a psychology degree just to categorize the amount of trauma this kid had gone through… and it wasn’t some distant thing. To him, they were describing events that had never happened. Just a story. Like a fanfic about people in real life.
To the kid? Within the last twenty four hours - depending on how one counted them, anyway - they realized they’d fallen in love, that they’d killed the person they loved in a truly permanent way, experienced pain and death on a scale that was utterly insane, went through the experience of killing everyone that mattered to them, and were desperately trying to cling to any hope of making things right.
And they were confessing everything - their sins, their feelings, everything - to the echo of the guy they’d fallen in love with. That they knew couldn’t possibly return even a fraction of their feelings.
It was like they’d said, about when the other Sans had spared them - that they felt had no choice, that they had to go and lay themself on his mercy.
And he had to figure out what to do about this.
They shook their head as if clearing their thoughts.
“Look, I know this has got to be awkward for you,” they said. “But you don’t owe me anything. It’s the opposite… I owe you everything. I won’t make any demands on you. You can accept my friendship, or reject it. You can feel whatever you want for me - love, hate, care, annoyance, frustration - and I’ll accept it all. I destroyed the friendship we’d grown naturally, in my short-sighted idiocy, and that’s a loss I just have to deal with.”
As he’d speculated, and as part of their confession, openly revealed. Just throwing themself at his mercy, in every way.
“I don’t know how I’ll feel once everything is fixed, once that promise is fulfilled. Right now, it feels like it’s the only thing that’s driving me to keep living, beyond the simple fear of death. That, and the hope that you’ll want me to live. But this timeline… it’s been healing. Seeing Papyrus so happy… I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. Maybe I’ll start to actually be okay, by the time everything is fixed.”
“But one thing that is certain… you have my absolute loyalty,” they said, a burning intensity to their voice, and determination in their eyes. “I don’t see that changing. Ever. As I’d said at the cliff… my life, my death, my service, anything. You saved me from myself, from losing who I am, from Chara taking true and absolute control. I will never stop being grateful for that.”
He looked away, thoughts overwhelming him.
Every step in this process had made sense. Not everything was what he’d have done, of course, but it all had made sense. In a sometimes deranged sort of way. He felt for them, empathized with them, for every step of the journey.
And that tender smile he’d seen in this timeline? He understood it now. Really understood it. It wasn’t mere appreciation for the monsters they encountered, like he’d first assumed. He was watching them heal. That’s why it had looked so profound, so impossibly tender and loving. He was watching their appreciation, not of the individuals, but of the piece-by-piece restoration of everything they had lost.
“this really isn’t healthy,” he said after a moment. “you know that, right?”
They laughed.
“Nothing in my mind is healthy,” they said, their tone a little bitter. “And it hasn’t been for a while. It’s one of the reasons my trust in you is absolute - I’ve decided you are more trustworthy than I am, and so I lay my fate entirely in your hands. I am determined to see things through, still determined to live, because that’s just… who I am.”
They hesitated a moment, uncertainty flashing in their eyes.
“Telling you all this… was supposed to be a precursor to you telling me what you were feeling, too,” they said tentatively. “But, um, you don’t have to.”
Their nervousness and uncertainty was clear on their face. It was a small thing, but also kind of a make-or-break moment, for their friendship. It’d determine his intentions in their eyes. Whether he intended to be fair with them, or to use them as a tool.
“yeah, i do,” he said casually, then added with a wink. “i tell the best jokes, i give murderous time travellers a bad time, and i keep my word.”
“Damn right, you do,” they said, grinning broadly at him. Then their face fell. “Sorry about making you break your promise.”
“well, as you said, it never happened, right?” he asked.
“Right,” they agreed.
He paused for another moment, gathering his thoughts.
He was pretty damn confident that there was nothing he could do or say that would actually push them too far, that would drive them away. He could decide to do… all sorts of things that flashed through his too-active imagination… and they’d take it with a smile. And would probably thank him for the opportunity to do him a service.
Awkward.
But it had other implications, too. The main reason that honesty was hard in relationships - friendships or otherwise - was because unpleasant or dark truths could be damaging to relationships. Well, one of the main reasons, anyway.
He didn’t have to worry about that in this case. Their devotion to him… that look in their eyes, it was downright fanatical. Not healthy, sure, but it seemed trustworthy. He could twist the knife, emotionally torment them, and they’d stay fervently devoted.
On a purely pragmatic, practical level, they were too useful, too important to discard. But he didn’t want them to just become a tool. He had decided to try for friendship, and that was going to be… well, not like any other friendship he’d ever made, that was for sure.
But it seemed like the only path for anything real was something based on honesty. He didn’t tend to show his cards to anyone. Not Papyrus, no one. But…
He studied the zealous fervor in their eyes. Unflinching acceptance of whatever he’d decide. Okay, he was sure he could make them flinch, but that aside.
Should he do his usual and play around, revealing a little through jokes, or just say fuck it and lay it all out? The first was way more comfortable for him, but… he sighed. The second seemed like it was the only way to have any hope of building anything real. This couldn’t grow in the usual way. Pragmatic, manipulative reasoning in hopes for a result that could become real - seemed like the best he could do.
Naked truth it was.
“so, like you, i’m going to try to be honest, even if it’s awkward,” he said, and they nodded. “fact is, this whole situation is messed up, complicated, and confusing. you explained things fine, but it’s confusing how i should feel about it, and about you. i don’t love you, but i do like you. you’re fun, you’re a great audience, even if you’ve already heard the joke. you’re patient and you care about monsters a hell of a lot. and about your friends.”
They nodded, still looking uncertain.
“at the same time, you’re dangerous as hell, and i don’t mean that in the sense of worrying you’re going to snap and start murdering people,” he said. “really don’t think you will. you don’t seem to take the resets seriously. like you don’t get that you’re erasing timelines and making versions of people cease to exist.”
They flinched hard at that.
“I get it better, now,” they murmured.
“which is good,” he said. “still. on a gut level, it’s a problem, y’know?”
They nodded. He hesitated, and decided to just go for it.
“fact is, and maybe this is harsh, but… i think about that other sans. you cared about him. he cared about you. he asked you not to erase him. you did it anyway,” he said.
He was pretty sure he’d have gotten less of a reaction from them if he’d actually pulled out a gaster blaster and shredded them to bloody scraps. Assuming they lived long enough to react, that is.
His face was blank and dispassionate as they gripped the table, tears streaming down their face, their entire body shaking. They looked like they were collapsing in on themself, but physically weren’t capable of collapsing enough. Their breaths were broken, like they weren’t even able to sob.
He locked down their local bubble of space in time, so they’d have time to recover before getting anyone’s attention.
“i bet you’d hurt less if i’d killed you instead,” he said lightly, trying to liven things up.
“God, Sans, so much less,” they said with a broken laugh. “I want you to kill me so much right now… the pain of your attacks is… distracting. And weirdly relieving. It hurts so much less to die, than… than to realize I betrayed you… Sans… I’m so… I’m so sorry…”
His mental checklist of predictions was looking very green. He’d intentionally phrased things to hurt, and their devotion didn’t flicker. If anything, it looked stronger.
“i get it,” he said, a little gruffly. “but as i said, i don’t hate you. and it’s complicated. you can see that, right? why it’s kinda messy on this end?”
“Yeah, I can,” they said, looking down and wiping at their face.
They’d regained their composure enough that he let the timefreeze lapse.
“there’s a part of me that’s worried something like that is going to happen to me, too,” he admitted with a sigh. “that i’ll put in all this work into trying to make this timeline work out, and it won’t mean anything. it’ll all be erased.”
“I won’t do that this time,” they said seriously.
“all it’d take is for something to get in your craw, make you change your mind,” he said.
He knew he was pushing, and that maybe he was being unfair, but it was really eating at him. But he also felt that it didn't matter, because he couldn’t push them too hard. And if he was wrong about that, he was pretty sure he'd see it if they were getting close to their limit.
“what about the next thing that you feel like you ‘have’ to do, that everything hangs in the balance unless you reset? you know what they say - if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. if your special power is the ability to reset time, then that’s what you’re gonna want to do.”
They looked away and thought for a moment.
“It’s not as good as saying it’ll never happen, but…” they said, and looked at him again. “We did try a little, in that first timeline, to see if I could bring anyone else along. We didn’t try much, though. You wanted me to mostly just not use the power at all, Alphys wanted to just spend time with Undyne, and I wasn’t really feeling the need to use it, either.
“And then, when I had the horrible idea… you’d mentioned maybe trying harder to get you to remember, and I hate this, I really… but I didn’t want you to see what I’d do, you know? I didn’t… I didn’t think about the implications, that I was really erasing you. I just wanted the version of you that was my friend to not have to see what I was thinking of doing. I had this stupid image in my head that I’d reset, do horrible things, learn stuff, fix everything, and then we’d be back together and it’d all be good, and you wouldn’t have to be burdened with what I’d done. Because I was a fucking idiot, but that’s what was going on in my head.”
He nodded at that. And that Sans had been too hurt by it all, by the perceived betrayal, to really lay it out. Because the kid was insightful, so that Sans would have had reason to believe they did get it, and were trying to follow this path anyway.
“But I didn’t see it, Sans, honestly I didn’t,” they said and he nodded again. “Let’s make it a priority this time, okay? Even if we don’t think I will need the power, even if we hope nothing ever comes up that’ll be an issue… let’s get that problem out of the way right from the start. Let’s try - you, me, Alphys, whoever else you think will help - and let’s try to do whatever it takes to get you to remember the resets. We know Flowey can remember my resets, and so I’ll ask him, when he’s less insane, after fixing everything. See if he has any insights.”
Maybe a little dangerous that this person was saying “do whatever it takes,” but sadly, it was reassuring. Most people didn’t really mean those words. This kid, though? He couldn’t help but feel a surge of honest to goodness, real optimism.
It’d been a while.
“that’s… probably a good idea,” he said. “it is kinda selfish to feel like it helps, just for me to be able to remember, but it is what it is.”
They smiled at him.
“Trust me, I get that, Sans,” they said. “There’s a big difference between being on the outside and on the inside of this loop.”
“do you think it’s even possible, though?” he asked. “i don’t know the full story with flowey, but it sounds like his circumstances were… unique.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Small resets… do those bother you?” they asked, and he gave them a curious look, so they elaborated. “Like, if I save right next to you, and we have a giant list of things to try, and I just reload after every failed attempt. So rather than you tediously going through the whole list, I just tell you what number to try. Would that bother you?”
“no,” he said after a moment. “that’d feel like skipping work, not losing myself.”
They grinned at that.
“Then if it’s possible at all, I’m sure we can do it,” they said. “Doesn’t matter how expensive the trials are, or how much work it takes. I can just tell you ahead of time exactly the point at which I’ll save, and you can just help as needed, and otherwise screw around for fun. And you’ll only end up experiencing the version where things actually worked.”
“might not be very ‘small’ resets, if you’re talking about buying and building expensive equipment,” he pointed out.
“We can play it by ear, whatever you’re comfortable with,” they said. “The point is, we do know it’s possible for an entity other than myself to remember my resets, and vice versa. When Flowey got the souls and gained control over the power, I remembered his resets, too. Determination may be important, but we’ve got Alphys’s DT extractor and an ability to undo things if they go wrong.”
It wasn’t actually Alphys’ extractor… but that was beside the point. The idea of doing determination experiments on him was uncomfortable, but they were right that it didn’t have the risk of real consequences.
“One way or another… if it’s possible at all, we can do it. And we can try to play it so that we’re not putting undue pressure on you or Alphys. I am kinda insane and insanely committed to following things through, so I’m not worried about me giving up, no matter how long I spend. I don’t care if I spend years over the course of what you perceive as weeks, I won’t give up.”
The look in their eyes… yeah, he agreed with that.
“tell me, kid,” he said after another moment. “i get the feeling i already know, but, promises. you take them seriously?”
“Absolutely and unquestionably,” they said, their eyes blazing. “What promise do you want from me?”
“i figured, this whole thing between you and me, it all started with a promise,” he said with a shrug. “maybe we can end this with one, too.”
They nodded, and the look they gave him was so intense it was almost frightening.
“promise me that you won’t do it again,” he said. “that you won’t just erase our timeline without seriously thinking things through. that you won’t go on another murder spree. that you will…”
He hesitated a moment, thinking of wording. It was a bit self-centered, but it was how he felt, damn it.
“... that you will try your best not to leave me behind,” he finished.
They reached out and took his hand, squeezing it tightly.
“I swear to you,” they said, their voice blazing as sharply as their eyes. “I swear it, Sans, on all that you have done for me, on my soul, on every scrap of love in my heart for all of those that have stolen my heart. I will never treat full resets as anything less than the destruction of the world as it exists. Reloads are far lesser than that, and those we’ll play by ear, but I will always think about you and try to involve you in their use. I will never, ever, under any circumstances, go on a murder spree, or even kill anyone at all, especially if there’s any chance of it sticking, unless you personally decide it’s necessary. And I will strive to do whatever it takes, no matter how long, no matter how hard, to… to never leave you behind. To take you with me.”
It was kinda ridiculous how much better that made him feel.
He sometimes got a little awkward at sappy things, and the way that promise felt, well…
“uh, that’s good,” he said awkwardly. “well, uh, yeah. so. we have a plan. and, uh. i guess asgore’s waiting, huh?”
“Yeah, he is,” they said with a smirk. “Will I see you in the Hall of Judgment?”
Y’know, that’s just what the corridor was named now. That was fine.
“pretty sure i don’t need to judge you, unless you end up breaking your promise in the next few minutes, which would surprise me,” he said with a chuckle.
“Ha, ha,” they said dryly. “But maybe you should. It’d be a good… little goodbye. Flowey will kill me once he gets the human souls. It’s only a few minutes after that point, but there’s going to be a lot of reloads in that gap.”
“makes sense,” he said, and felt another twinge of nervousness.
Hopefully it all went the way the kid expected. They’d only ever done it the once, and it seemed risky as hell to let the murder-flower get the souls, but it sounded like it was a necessary step.
He started to head off.
“i’ll be watching,” he said. “good luck, kid.”
They trembled a little at his words and nodded. He went off to the side and teleported back to his room.
He really needed a moment.