RIFT

Chapter 1: No More (2023 Integrated Version on AO3) 1. Cobalt (Intro) 2. Be Still, My Tongue - Sans 3. A Reason to Hold On - Sans Chapter 2: Eclipse (2023 Integrated Version on AO3) 4. Reset - Frisk 5. 1001 - Sans to Papyrus 6. Insight XXXIV Chapter 3: The Machine 7. set adrift 8. Cherish 9. Catch Chapter 4: Golden Flowers 10. Fallen Down 11. Home (from "Undertale") 12. Ruins Chapter 5: There, Sometimes 13. EYE HAVE YOU - Flowey Fight 14. Waterfall (Undertale Remix) Chapter 6: Scales 15. A Way With You 16. Spear of Justice - From Sans' Perspective 17. Battle Against a True Hero (From Undertale) - From Frisk's Chapter 7: Your Brother 18. Plume - Undyne on Piano 19. I Wanted to Leave - Undyne on Piano 20. Stay Hollow (with mossy) - feat sans undertale lmao 21. On My Side - Sans to Frisk Chapter 8: Remember 22. But Why? 23. Stonewall Stone Fence - Frisk to Sans

Chapter 9: A Good Person 24. Alphys 25. Sacrilegium III 26. It's Raining Somewhere Else Chapter 10: Gray Ghosts 27. You Make Me Happy - up until Sans and Frisk argue 28. Another Medium Chapter 11: The Descent 29. Here We Are 30. Not Human - Frisk 31. Land of All - Sans (convince me woodkid doesn't have his voice) Chapter 12: The Experiment 32. Promise (Reprise) 33. Bone 34. Collapsing Sun 35. The Great Cataclysm 36. The World Spins Madly On - the aftermath Chapter 13: Encaged 37. empty crown - frisk 38. Across the Drift 39. Scars (Instrumental Version) 40. Summer Clouds - sans 41. Don't Leave Me Here Chapter 14: Human 42. Megalovania - Piano 43. BRIEF 44. Crawl 45. It's Alright 46. Promise - Sans to Frisk 47. everything i wanted - Frisk to Sans Chapter 15: Determination 48. Soul Mirror 49. His Theme (From "Undertale) 50. The Place You Promised to Show Me 51. OATH 52. Blooming (In C Minor) 53. Confrontation 54. Your Soul is Beautiful Chapter 16: Together, Apart 55. Ashes in the Wind 56. Find Yourself 57. Believe 58. Lovin' Me (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) - Sans and Frisk Chapter 17: Epilogue 59. I'll Be There Soon 60. Reunited (From Undertale) 61. Cobalt (Outro) lookit all dos chikinz amazing, you made it to the bottom here, you may behold our beloved:

Now for the spoilery bits. ;)

The second part would primarily follow Dings as he navigates his new life on the Surface, reconnects with family and friends, tackles his trauma (both preexisting and from the void), and comes to grips with his mental illness. It would allow me to get into some things that weren't exactly relevant to Rift but I would like to explore. For instance, you might have noticed that Wingdings and Sans have very different perspectives on their mother's absence. There's a reason for that. He has hangups on humans for related reasons as well, which would be an obstacle to overcome. Their past has been left a mystery I'd like to excavate. And I don't know about you, but I personally want to see Dings and Papyrus bond already because dammit they barely know each other anymore and that sucks!

There's also a lot of potential to face how Frisk deals with the new normal. If I regret anything, it's that Sans took over the narrative of Rift to the point I felt there wasn't quite enough room to truly resolve Frisk's new perspective as Chara. Asriel was thrown to the backburner as well. That plus the reality about how the resets only affected those in the Rift's sphere of influence could lead to some interesting conflict. I imagine it's been really hard on Frisk. If anything, their arc in Rift took them to a darker place in contrast to Sans' heading to a lighter one.

Speaking of Sans . . . though he left off in a good place overall, there's the hard truth that Dings just isn't going to be the same after what he went through. The same is true for Sans, of course. There's potential for further healing and coming to terms with their relationship now versus then.

In short, it would mostly be about healing (as is pretty much everything I write, I've come to realize). Hurt/comfort like Rift but not nearly as high stakes or intense. It would be much lighter in tone: some comedic moments, some heartfelt ones, some tense ones. Slice of life, like I said.

An incandescent future unfolded over the course of that year. Though far too familiar events repeated with frustrating familiarity, they arrived in new packages: some in bright and colorful wrapping, some in grossly damaged bags. Even if confusing and often jarring, most monsters expressed gratitude to have familiar yet unfamiliar lives awaiting. The additional security and a world more accepting allowed them to press on with more comfort than expected. 

Not all were as fortunate. Several returned to lives in pieces. Lost relationships. Humans that knew them, loved them, and had aged beyond them. Photographs of small children they might never conceive. Tombstones engraved with names of the living . . . sometimes their own. 

At first, Asgore and Toriel tried to shield you from the responsibility. This level of accountability, they said, should not rest on a child’s small shoulders. No one needed to know about your hand in the broken clock. 

You didn’t see it that way. Not knowing why their lives had been stolen, left wondering if their relationships could be undone again, only festered the wound. So you explained to them what had happened and why, and swore that it would not and could not happen again. Amazing, how forgiving monsters could be—not that they all were. 

For three months, HEART continued its search for monsters left behind. The moment Sans had recovered, he had jumped at the chance to join Papyrus and Undyne among their ranks. His unique teleportation magic served them well once he had a feel for those snaking, unfamiliar shafts and pathways. Places once difficult to reach suddenly became accessible. Dozens of monsters and their families owed him thanks, especially those trapped deep in the Ruins. 

None of them were Wingdings.

With this and all else he had set in motion to free them, monsterkind quickly came to love and respect Sans in a way he had never truly experienced. Sure, he had been a recognizable face in the local comic scene, the friendly smile at Grillby’s every other night, the playful hotdog peddler in Hotland, sentry and judge for the royal family, but never . . . this. If the swath of gifts and well wishes in his hospital room hadn’t been enough proof, Asgor went far enough as publicly honoring him. He hadn’t knighted him, thankfully—a fact Sans could not celebrate more—but he did proclaim something more touching than that. 

He named a star.

As a human, the first mention of this honor had underwhelmed you. Humans named stars all the time for science, for romance, for shits and giggles. What you hadn’t understood was that, to monsters, this meant far more than looking up and picking a distant flicker. 

Their people had evolved from stardust. While humans had a touch of this magic in them, monsters churned with this fire as their lifeblood. The celestial bodies, their very beginnings, were esteemed with enough reverence to be gods. 

Their banishment to the Underground had been especially cruel for this fact, and after such a long separation from the sky, marking their reunion with a new light was more than fitting. After all, when someone’s name was thought with enough intent in so many hearts, a star wasn’t only named; it was born. 

It was bright and it was beautiful. When viewed through his telescope, it nestled in a pocket of blue and gold fringed in red, much like the Ring Nebula, only light years from a star they had once named after you. 

“i don’t get it,” he admitted to you after the fact. “all i did was make up for somethin’ i did wrong. my motivations weren’t exactly heroic either.”

“Not all knights wear armor, Sir Sans the Star.”

“heh . . . and just what’re you gettin’ at, fair frisk the fart?”

You laughed. “It doesn’t matter why you did it,” you said. “You still did it. You brought back the dead, Sans. You deserve to be thanked for that, don’t you?”

You knew Asriel hadn’t been the one he wanted to resurrect. Even after the members of HEART had disbanded, he delved into the dark in search of Wingdings until his phalanges bled and his magic ran dry. All of you had begged him to relent, Asgore more than anyone. Not until every inch of the Underground’s remains had been scoured did he finally lose hope.

At least now, his brother’s name did not wither from memory like a dream in the morning light. For the first time, he could mourn him freely. He could share memories with those who knew him, find understanding in kindred spirits, and heal.

As one year on the surface came to a close, he finally found the courage to destroy the machine.

The spring sun crisped dewdrops from dandelions as you and Sans strode across his overgrown lawn. The skeleton brothers’ house, a cozy little two story chalet, stood half embedded in the steep hillside behind you. Its stilted, elevated porch overlooked miles of green forest and a babbling river inlet at the knoll’s foot, just as he had remembered. A long road wound atop the hill’s peak, passing from driveway to driveway to outline a comfortably spaced neighborhood. In the distance, Mount Ebott reached among smaller peaks for white clouds in a gold and pink sky. 

Under your arms, you each carried a folded mesh lawn chair. Matte black aviator sunglasses masked Sans’ eyes, though a cyan glow smoked behind the left lens. A pair of bright purple shields blocked your own. Following behind in a cloud of blue magic, the rusty, tattered block of a machine he called a “temporal flux manipulator” hovered helplessly a meter off the ground.

A safe distance from the coyote bushes dotting the property line, Sans shook out his chair and tossed it down beside a patch of naked buckwheat. You followed suit and plopped into your seat.

“countdown?” Sans requested.

Before you could start, he had flung the machine unceremoniously upward, nearly thirty feet into the air. At its very peak, he voided his magic. It plummeted into a satisfying cacophonous crash of metal and glass, as if a double decker had smashed into a brick wall.

“Three,” you said.

Two Gaster Blasters materialized over his shoulders.

“Two.”

Their unhinged jaws pooled white-hot energy in their gullets.

“One.”

Those wild-eyed dragon skulls unleashed two furious jets of dangerous magic. The light reflected in your sunglasses. Screams of raging power overwhelmed the once peaceful ambiance of nature. You both watched impassively, but perhaps just a little smugly, as what had once been a marvel of science was pummeled down into a flaming mess. 

The blasters dissipated, appeased. Both natural and magical fire burned high like a bonfire in front of you. You popped open a bag of marshmallows. Sans, meanwhile, emptied an old yellow envelope into the flames, then shrugged and tossed in the sleeve as well. Blueprint after blueprint shriveled away to embers, never to be crafted again.

“erase that, ya fat gameboy,” he muttered. 

Just as he reclined in his chair, a sputter of laughter spooked him out of it again.

“That was five years of our lives and 20 million G in government funding you just blew up.”

Sans whipped around, eye sockets wide and empty. You followed his gaze. The uncooked marshmallow you had been too impatient to wait for fell from your lips.

A lanky skeleton stood somewhat removed behind your chairs, clinging to a small paper bag and his own wrist. An orange laminate wristband hung above his bony palm, rugged from wear, and another rested alongside it in white. The sleeves of his loose, plum colored button-up had been pushed up to his elbows; the buttons down his torso had been fastened incorrectly, off by one. Something like apprehension and hesitation lit the small lights of his eyes, so similar to Sans’ and yet worlds apart. 

Sans’ hand shook audibly as he peeled the sunglasses from his face.

Wingdings looked exactly the same as he had nearly a century ago—no longer melted, his body whole—even if those awful cracks still split his skull. They had been mended, only scars now behind a thin but large pair of lopsided circular glasses. Though he had seemed joyful a moment ago, his smile slowly slipped away. 

At his heels, a small white dog panted happily. Far behind, at a bend in the road, a black Lincoln idled in park. Asgore stood leaning on the car door, watching from afar.

“I guess,” Wingdings eased past the silence, “it worked. Kind of. In a roundabout way. Basically, I was right; you were wrong. Congrats to me.” A small smile split his face again and his shoulders twitched upward. “Hooray,” he lilted weakly.

Sans had been creeping cautiously nearer, trembling, tracing that silhouette with the star of his left eye. Only inches apart, he touched the wristbands. The white one listed his name, his species, a mental hospital, and an admittance date—almost nine months ago. The orange band simply stated, “SUPERVISION REQUIRED.” 

Sans’ face was wet before he realized why. Every thought and feeling had been swept away until now.

“did you really come all the way from the void,” he hardly breathed, “just to rub it in my face?”

Wingdings stared down at him a long moment before his eyelights circled up into a cinched brow. He shrugged again. “Yes?”

Sans bubbled with laughter then, and Dings bubbled back. Next thing you knew, they were piled in each other's bones on the ground, happy, relieved, home. The Annoying Dog danced joyful doggy circles around them with a wildly flapping tail. 

From his vantage point, Asgore smiled with relief and found the resolve to approach.

“Oh, hey,” Wingdings said brightly when he noticed you nearing. “One sec.” 

He opened the paper bag and rustled around inside. The sound of pill bottles jostling like rain sticks only distracted you a moment before he surfaced something both considerate and serendipitous. Chocolate. Your favorite. A big, thick bar of the good stuff, the kind that melted in the mouth and made for soft and perfect s’mores. Your mouth salivated as you took the brick into your hands. The two of you were going to get along fine.

“One square at a time,” Asgore instructed you firmly.

You nodded.

“nine months?” Sans lamented playfully, tugging at the band around his brother’s wrist. “i coulda given birth by now. what happened? where were you? why . . .” Joy siphoned out of him. “why didn’t i know?”

At this, the anxious guilt Wingdings had forgotten sprang to life again.

“I’ll explain.” Asgore’s broad shoulders blocked the sun like a monument. His large though gentle voice stilled them all. 

“Your majesty, I can . . .” 

“I am no longer ‘your majesty,’” the great boss monster interrupted Wingdings with a smile. “I am your friend.” 

Dings relented, then, even if he fidgeted with the tags wrapped around his ulna and radius. Sans took his hand hostage.

Shortly before Sans had joined HEART, a small team had discovered Wingdings deep in the remnants of Waterfall. They had nearly given up their search when an annoying white dog barked after them ceaselessly. It led them to a dark alcove behind watery curtains, where Wingdings lay huddled in a corner, confused and nearly starved. 

“I was all bone,” Wingdings interjected shyly, but no one smiled. 

When he received the call that yet another skeleton had been unearthed, Asgore had raced to meet them almost as fast as he had run to meet you—but what he found was not the reunion he had hoped for. His smart, clever friend had been whittled down to a frightened creature with an ever fracturing hold on reality. With the breaking of the barrier, more than his grip on the rift had slipped loose. His mind had lost its bearings into a whirlwind of relentless psychosis. Excluding his early years in the void, Wingdings could not remember enduring an episode darker than this. 

Though warned of Wingdings’ catatonia and incoherency, the king of the underground immediately requested to visit him. He was glad he did. Something about seeing Asgore snapped Wingdings out of his stupor and into a brief moment of clarity, long enough to ask for help . . . and beg for the news not to escape, not even to Sans. 

“I didn’t want to be seen like that, marbles all over the floor,” Dings said. “And if I couldn’t be helped, well . . . I thought it would be better to stay forgotten.”

‘i didn’t forget you.” Sans’ grip on his brother’s hand tightened. “i mourned you. i thought you were dead.” 

‘I’m sorry.”

“I should have told you, Sans,” said Asgore. “Right away. I was torn . . . and the longer I put it off, the harder it became.”

Sans took measure of his heartache and decided it wasn’t worthwhile to blame them, not now. He had learned to forgive Asriel; he could absolve his brother and Asgore of this one misstep. He let the warmth of that metal bonfire and the sight of Wingdings’ tired face smooth over his soul.

“you don’t gotta apologize,” he sighed. “it sounds . . . scary.”

Windings nodded meagerly, but did not elaborate.

Asgore had placed him in a special care ward under the brightest human and monster minds he could assemble. Thankfully, humans had already researched three years ahead on this front. With their combined understanding of monster and human anatomy, they found a combination of physical and magical treatment that worked enough to stabilize him. The rest relied on therapy. 

“I’ll have sessions twice a week,” said Dings. “Asgore already agreed to take me, so if you have reservations . . .”

“reserva—the hell are you talking about?” Sans said. He had gripped his little brother by the shoulders, then, harsh at first but quickly gentle. Tears beaded in his eyes. “you think a little hot water’s gonna scare me off? you’ll be lucky if you get me off your heels!”

“It’s not over,” Windings said shakily. “I’m not cured. Something like this doesn’t just go away. It . . . sleeps.”

Sans deflated, then softly clutched him to his chest. Dings lowered his eyes, melting touch-starved into arms he had once lost hope in feeling. 

“i know,” Sans answered calmly. “and when it wakes up you don’t gotta face it solo. you’re not alone in the dark anymore. you’re home.”

Sans inhaled deeply, mercifully, as if he hadn’t truly breathed since the day he lost him. Saying the words aloud had released something inside him like puncturing a balloon. Everything felt pure and new: the weight of his brother in his arms; the scent of him intermingled with the neighbor’s freshly-cut grass; the warmth of his breath amid the late summer sunlight bleaching his skull; the glow of his eyes against the bonfire flickering strange their shadows. Nothing would let him forget this, not even the stars that began to glimmer out of hiding. 

“you’re home,” he said again, and this time his voice rattled with joy.

Wingdings held him very tightly then, desperately, and with it Sans knew he shared the sentiment. He smiled truly, deeply, never more whole, and hid it for himself in folds of wine purple cloth. 

“you made it.”

The End

Hear me now, hope you're listening It's been centuries, least what it seems to me I've been on this road, my eyes glistenin' Our past don't matter, I'm much stronger And fly much farther, soar overseas Finally, see, I'll keep on climbing Ridin' the lightning and I am sure

At times, I really didn't show What was wrong with me, wrong with me I told myself I cannot grow Without lovin' me, lovin' me But this is just the hell that lives inside Tell me now, where to? Please be my guide

I've been goin', goin' in circles Reoccurring dreams, talkin' in my sleep Then I'm floatin' up to the surface I can finally breathe, I could do anything And I don't know why it's all right And it's not at the same time Then I look up at a blue sky And I know

At times, I really didn't show What was wrong with me, wrong with me I tell myself I cannot grow Without lovin' me, lovin' me This is just the hell that lives inside Tell me now, where to? Please be my guide

"Lovin' Me" - Kid Cudi feat. Phoebe Bridgers

That's it. That's the end. :')

This has been an amazing journey. Thank you, thank you so much for reading through to the end.

I've been considering starting a new fic, a part two so to speak, that follows Wingdings as he reconnects with family and friends and learns to navigate his new life. Plus healing, as well as his mental health and trauma from the void. Maybe romance??? idk. A wholesome slice-of-life thing, much lighter in tone. I have scenes in my head already.

Thank you again. I have a surprise in store, so please don't unsubscribe just yet. ;)

Drifting incorporeal beleaguered the mind like a lengthy shortcut. No breath. No sight. No sound. Sans sensed your presence near him, conjoined with a red ribbon of fate . . . or was it determination that bound you now? It didn't matter. What mattered was that you each refused to let the other go.

You recognized this sensory deprivation chamber. You had lived this way for years buried behind yellow carpals, detached from a truly compatible form. The only word that had ever come close to describing it was "limbo." It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, save for the tiresome pull at your resolve.

You could feel the time turner draining you, hungrier and hungrier. Even though your well of determination flowed ceaselessly, the machine very nearly outpaced you. Then, when the situation felt dire,  Sans' soul drew its attention away and allowed your supply to replenish. 

That greedy mechanism thought nothing of the lives fueling it. Just as it had guzzled down your determination, it drank dry from him. His determination did not rejuvenate as plentifully as yours; after all, he was only half the flesh and blood that grounded you. He still dusted when he fell. He still needed hope to survive. You refused to let it overdraft from him, as he had done for you.

It went on like this in an endless cycle. Whenever he nearly emptied, your determination caught fire and refilled his cup. Then he did the same for you, even if less impressively. Back and forth and back again, your collective determination fought valiantly, but slowly, steadily trickled down.

After what could have been years or seconds, that atrocity of metal and magic finally licked its lips with satisfaction. Your souls clung to one another, nearly spent, and yet determined to return to a world where you could forge ahead together. If the machine could listen, maybe it would take you there.

The white light finally dispersed into smaller and smaller fragments. The pieces drizzled in cold flakes from a crystal ceiling that looked nothing and everything like the stars. Snow. Sans stared up from where he lay and once again found it easy to imagine he soared through space. His head swam. His body felt stiff and immovable, pinned, though his arms wrapped around something warm. 

He dipped out of consciousness again. Though it felt like the blink of an eye, when he woke next the snow no longer fell, and a blanket of crystal white tucked him into a sharp and crooked bed. The warmth in his arms remained, though colder than before.

He clenched his eyes shut and grimaced. A cloud of dust and mist hacked its way out his mouth. He grunted to feel something jagged snaking between his ribs. Coughing only made it worse.

He turned his faded eye lights dizzily around him. Clearly he lay in Snowdin, though where or when escaped him. It took a moment to remember what had happened before the world went white, but when it finally returned to him, he bolted upright.

ouch.

That was a mistake. He huffed a gravelly breath and collapsed back into the rubble and snow that cocooned him. 

When he focused enough, he could make out what was left of the basement roof and the frame of his home in shambles. Fallen stalactites and crystals littered the ground among cracks in the earth. The machine stood resolutely where they had left it, though the lever had broken clean off and its monitor had shattered. 

He found the bravery to look down into his arms.

There you lay, alive, not spirited away into an alternate universe where you remained asleep forever under a golden flower garden. You must have fallen on top of him, your head where his stomach would be, your hands also bound to his sides. Albeit nearly as buried under plaster, wood, and other rubble, you breathed easily. 

"kid," he tried to say, but it hardly left him in a whisper. He shook you lightly instead. 

You didn't wake.

"frisk," he managed to force through whatever was stuck in his ribs. "wake up."

Your eyelids fluttered open. Pebbles once stones sprinkled off your head as you lifted it only inches. You took the same pause he had, calculating where you were, when you were. 

Sans' face split with a relieved smile when you moved. In the corner of your eye, you caught his expression and reflected it.

"We made it," you breathed with relief.

"sure did," he murmured. He coughed again and this time tasted a little magic. "shit."

"What's wrong?"

"mm . . . can't move," he hummed tiredly. "somethin's got me kabobbed in the ch . . . chest."

You also tried to sit up, but failed. The weight of what remained of his house pinned you down at the knees. You struggled just a moment longer, then dropped to rest your head against him wearily. Your soul ran nearly empty.

Sans' eyes felt heavy again. "you okay?" he murmured.

"Tired," you mumbled back. "Cold."

He nodded knowingly. The way his soul felt now, the ordeal must have pushed him just short of his limits. He couldn't imagine yours fared any better.

Slowly, painfully, he managed to free his arms from the wreckage. He pried the sleeves of his jacket off, then paused to catch his breath. Through clenched teeth, he mustered the strength to pull that indigo coat over his head amid a rain of snow and powder. He draped it gingerly across you like a blanket.

You had nearly fallen asleep again when its weight fell over you.

"don't worry, kiddo," you heard him wheeze faintly. "it's . . . gonna b . . . be . . ."

When he failed to continue, adrenaline sharpened your wits. You forced your eyes upward.

"Sans?"

He didn't answer.

You struggled upright again and pulled harder against the grave of debris gripping your legs in place. Sheets of wood and plaster slid away from you into the crossbeams of old rafters like a broken carapace. The rubble felt to cinch tighter around your legs. Just as you began to worry that moving did more harm than good, a crack and whump of falling bricks proved you right. 

The sensation that something had gone terribly wrong in your left leg shivered up your spine into the back of your head. It was a pitifully late messenger, warning you of the pain now flooding you with stars and dripping eyes. You cried out and collapsed under Sans’ jacket.

After a moment of gasping and crying, you remembered he needed you. You steeled your nerves. Shaking, you began peeling away pieces of the upper floor from his torso. The last block of wood revealed a jagged chunk of metal protruding from his core, straight through the bleeding heart graphic on his t-shirt. You worked your fingers into the fabric to rip it wider and see how you could fix this.

As the shirt split open, you realized this might be beyond your power to solve. The beam skewered his cavity at an angle from shoulder to hip, where it disappeared into that mess of a foundation. Though it had thankfully done its best to pass between the bone rather than through it, harsh abrasions tore across his ribcage and spine. A hairline fracture split three ribs and his collarbone where they met the sternum. His soul rested against the metal rod, slowly trickling cyan blue down the shaft. Its red interior had all but faded away, down to a faintly warm center. Its ruthless scars nearly faltered you.

You wrapped your trembling fingers around the icy metal and tugged outward slowly. Though he could not tell you if it hurt, the way his ribs clung to the rod and groaned like splintering wood gave you pause. Hadn’t you learned? What if moving it only made things worse?

You let go, and not entirely because you had meant to. Pain and weariness had surged in time to your pull on that harpoon, and the moment you braced to try again, you couldn’t hold onto anything anymore.

Every time you were aware enough to know it, you felt colder. At some point you must have slipped your arms into the sleeves of Sans’ coat and pulled the hood over your head. It slowed the inevitable chill that deepening pile of snow exhaled down your neck, but did not impede it altogether. You shivered, extremities tingling, numbing, burning.

You couldn't tell how much time passed. Nothing seemed to stir the air but the occasional flurry and the cold cave’s natural draft. The Underground sounded empty, and it very well could have been. The only comfort you found was in feeling Sans' bony body still lying whole beneath you, not dust, though not breathing either. A reassuring glimpse showed you that his soul no longer hemorrhaged magic, even if it glowed a little more dimly than before. 

In hours or days, voices finally stirred you back to the waking world through a thick fog. A warm light behind the wreckage mound flickered, tinting the darkness red. 

You opened your mouth but nothing came out. You were too tired, too weak. To your relief, they found you anyway. Your vision swam as if that fire rounding the corner were a mirage. You recognized Grillby, leading Papyrus and Undyne through the dark among several more monsters and . . . humans?  

A flurry of sound rattled your head, difficult to parse when fading in and out of consciousness as you did. You picked out tense voices, the whirring of machinery, the hum of magic, the crunch and shuffle of loose debris as it was thrown around and stomped. Suddenly you could breathe better. Suddenly you were warmer, safer, bundled in arms of fire that sank deep into your skin with purpose. The pain in your leg had dulled, though your head and mouth felt like cotton in exchange.

Through the din of screeching metal, you heard a hard, ironclad snap. You watched two firelit silhouettes carefully set aside a long metal rod stained blue and red. A glow of green illuminated Undyne’s scowling face from below. She was crouched over Sans, grumbling insults and curses under her breath. You listened to her mutter something about the damn skeleton not knowing how to stay in one piece for five seconds.

“. . . It’s . . . okay,” breathed a crackling voice overhead. 

You lifted your eyes to a pair of glasses over an expressionless wall of fire. You noticed that colors like blue and wine red accented Grillby’s flames in a way you’d never seen before—not that you had spent much time with him outside a few weekends and nights Sans visited with friends.

“. . . He’s going to . . . make it,” he hissed. A pop and flurry of golden sparks punctuated his sentence. “. . . You’re both . . . safe now.”

You hadn’t known you needed calming until those words spread through your soul like honey in hot tea. You breathed and relaxed, and in his arms you fell asleep more deeply than you had since lying in your old bed at the foot of Mount Ebott.

Through a third story window in Fresco Community Regional Hospital, North Medical Plaza, sunlight dappled in rays through palms and the near branches of a flowering tree. Birds chirped and twittered in an array of calls, from mockingbirds to sparrows and goldfinches. The occasional roll of tires on concrete, a humming engine, or voices outside the door buzzed gently through the air. 

Sans smelled the sterile saline-and-lemon scent of the hospital room first, a human phenomenon he hadn’t come to terms with as a monster. It bit at his sinuses, tart and bitter. Next, he felt the warmth of sunlight gently burning against his skull, dying the vision behind his closed left eye red like rose-tinted glasses. Too optimistic, he thought. He inhaled and winced. 

A rustle of paper to his right forced him to open his eyes. 

His gaze slowly circled the room with equal parts confusion and amazement. This was the surface; he couldn’t deny it. Humans had such a recognizable way of adorning public spaces, and while bland, the sight glittered to him now like gold. 

His ribs had been sutured and bandaged with hospital grade healing cloth, and his right arm crossed his midriff in a taut sling. Behind the semi-upright angle of his bed, machines that integrated human and monster technologies monitored his health. A drip of magic fed down a tube to his very soul, which felt full and satisfied. Strange, he thought, but not nearly as strange as the stacks upon stacks of flowers, various plant arrangements, and other get-well pleasantries stuffed into his room. He glimpsed notes from Doggo, Grillby, MK and his family, Shyren, Alphys . . . he swallowed the bashful flush sneaking onto his face.

After traveling from these gifts to the open window curtains to the television screen airing rerun morning game shows, his eye light finally came to rest beside his white-sheeted hospital bed. 

Papyrus sat cross-legged in a small armchair, immersed in a book of advanced sudoku puzzles. He wore fairly ordinary if gaudy human clothing: a snap-back cap embroidered with the meant-to-be-ironic statement, “full of life,” under a cartoon skull; a short sleeve button up with meatballs patterned on the left half and spaghetti graphics swirling on the right; the baggiest sweatpants Sans had ever seen; and Crocs absolutely littered with Jibbitz. Sans had known Papyrus to wear this sort of outfit on the surface before, but it had taken years to develop this much coordination behind it—and hadn’t he been the one to introduce him to sudoku, at a much simpler level no less? His face compressed as if this information tasted how the air smelled.

“you missed a three,” he muttered hoarsely. “row two, box one.”

Papyrus narrowed his eyes searchingly at the puzzle blocks, and then sighed. “REALLY, SANS, HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I ASKED YOU NOT TO SOLVE MY PUZZLES FOR ME?  IT TAKES ALL THE FUN OUT OF IT!”

He nearly spasmed out of his seat, then, as if struck by lightning. His book slapped the ground, and his pencil rolled away under his seat. 

“SANS!” he shrieked.

Sans smiled back warmly, nervously, somewhat worried for the state of his chest if his brother decided to hug him. He quickly realized that, although Papyrus leapt forward and wrapped his arms around his shoulders, he had nothing to worry about. The hold was soft, considerate. He held him back with his left arm, even if the motion dug like a knife into his collarbone.

Toriel burst into the room not a moment later. She too wore a dress that could be found in a human department store, royal purple and patterned with large yellow flowers. 

“What is going on?” she demanded, nearly frantic.

Sans smiled gleefully over Papyrus’ shoulder. He sheepishly wriggled the phalanges of his left hand in greeting.

“heh, ain’t like you not to knock, tori,” he teased.

“Oh, thank goodness,” she breathed with a purity of relief that echoed like pleasant bells around his skull. She exhaled a long, long sigh, hand on her chest, then glided to his bedside as if carried on a feather. “Thank goodness, Sans.” She slipped her arms around both brothers and rested her cheek on his skull.

Silence drifted over them comfortably.  

“um,” Sans ventured as they finally set him free. “i like your new threads. heh . . . get attired o’ the old stuff?”

Toriel and Papyrus exchanged hesitant glances. Sans felt his soul twist into knots.

“IT SEEMS,” said Papyrus, “WHEN TIME, ER . . . REWOUND . . . IT ONLY HAPPENED FOR US.”

Sans’ eye sockets darkened into black pits, only in small part because Papyrus knew about time travel. “what.”

“We left the mountain to find we already had homes here,” said Toriel. She gestured to her clothing. “Belongings. Entire lives left behind, though we cannot remember them.”

“IT’S THE STRANGEST THING, LIKE OPENING A PRESENT TO YOURSELF FROM THE FUTURE!”

The statement, while optimistic, settled heavy like lead on Sans’ soul. “you don’t remember any of it?” he asked slowly. “nothing new at all?”

“THINGS ARE . . . FAMILIAR,” said Papyrus. A puzzled look crossed his face. “IS THERE SOMETHING IN PARTICULAR YOU WANT ME TO REMEMBER?”

Sans’ heart sank. He became acutely aware of Toriel’s hand petting his arm and his brother’s hand in his. He watched Papyrus’ happy yet somehow somber expression and harkened back to a day so similar, when he had awakened in a hospital bed underground one brother fewer. Papyrus had been at his side then as he was now, blissfully unaware of what he had lost. 

“no,” he muttered. “suppose not.”

“The humans never forgot,” said Toriel gently. “From their perspective, we had quite literally vanished. Our homes remained empty for over six months, as if we had simply slipped away in the night without packing any bags. Some of us outright disappeared before their eyes.”

“the fuck,” Sans whispered. 

“LANGUAGE.” 

“how’d they deal with that?”

“Many moved on,” said Toriel. "I would have expected the rest to celebrate, but . . . they tried to find us. They scoured the city and the Underground for clues, but from their side it was abandoned. Strange, is it not?”

“I FOUND IT QUITE TOUCHING!” Papyrus said. “THEY EVEN FORMED A TASK FORCE! SOUL: SEARCH OPERATION FOR THE UNDERGROUND LOST.”

“heh, really?” Sans asked, beginning to find his humor again.

“YES, REALLY!”

“Everything is exactly as we left it,” said Toriel with a sad smile. “Likely a little dustier but . . . the activists were quite adamant about keeping our homes intact, and for that I am grateful.”

For a moment, he couldn’t think let alone respond. His left hand felt around the blankets as if searching out an emotion.

“it’s . . . exactly as we left it,” he echoed quietly. “time here . . . didn’t turn back.”

If he hadn’t been so stunned, Sans might have laughed. After all his hopelessness and despair, he wouldn’t have to rebuild his life from the ground up. He wouldn’t have to struggle as hard as he had before, and neither would anyone else. His heart pounded behind his battered ribs to know soon he would be going home, back to the small house in True Home, back to his porch swing with its perfect view of the forests and rivers below a range of mountains threatening to tear the sky in half, back to nights sandwiched on their maneater of a couch between Papyrus and . . . His joy stuttered.

“where’s Frisk?” he asked.

As if summoned, you appeared in the doorway, hobbling between a pair of children’s crutches. Your left leg had been set and wrapped in a bright blue cast from thigh to foot. Nearly every monster must have signed and graffitied its mold with paint pens and permanent ink. Above that, you wore a pale blue hospital gown and a scowl. 

“What’s going on?” you demanded. “Is Sans okay?” 

“Frisk, my child, what are you doing here?” Toriel admonished, albeit patiently. She hurried to you as if you might fall. “I requested that you stay behind and rest.”

“Yeah, fuck that.”

“My child!” Toriel gasped, and Papyrus’ jaw nearly dropped off his face.

Sans laughed, then, a grateful sound that had tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. His smile was so genuine that, if you hadn’t been so feisty and relieved, your heart might have fluttered away in its wind. 

“i’m better than okay, now that you’re here, kiddo,” he said fondly. 

Your steps were awkward, but you were determined to reach him. Nothing could stop you, not Toriel or those stupid crutches you had yet to master. At the bedside, Toriel finally relented and helped you sit on the mattress beside him. She squeezed your shoulder gently, reassuringly.

“THIS CHILD’S INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE IS YOUR FAULT, ISN’T IT?” Papyrus whispered, leering at his brother.

Sans attempted a sly shrug, but hissed an expletive when a stab of pain cut his collarbone. 

“CASE. IN. POINT.”

“Come, Papyrus. Let us give them some privacy,” Toriel said. “They have much to discuss, of that I am certain.”

Papyrus hesitated, but when Sans smiled and pressed his hand, he agreed to follow her out. The door shut behind them with a gentle snap. 

In the ensuing silence, the two of you simply took in each other’s faces, beaming like the sun you had unveiled once more. The daylight reddened your hair and yellowed the wall above Sans’ head in a steady shaft, as if to mark you both as its own. It would never let you leave again.

“you did it, kiddo,” he said as warmly as that nearest star. 

The congratulations prickled color into your cheeks, and though you smiled, you shook your head. “No, you did.”

“heh, you first.”

“I think last is what matters most.”

“coming in last does sound like me,” he mused playfully. The light of his left eye twinkled and he took your hand. “let’s compromise on a good old fashioned ‘we,’ then. we did it. how’s that?” 

You nodded brightly. 

He sighed, resting back comfortably into the sitting angle of his mattress. That truly lazy smile, the one he had faked for so long, now pulled at his cheekbones genuine and unprompted. Oh, how you had missed it. 

“get the sense i’ve been out a while,” he said. “what all have i snoozed on?”

Much had unfolded since waking nearly a week before him, and even more in the time preceding. After the barrier had broken and the rift had run rampant, the underground almost entirely collapsed. Thankfully, most monsters had already assembled in the capital to aid you. Among those trembling walls, Asgore needed no explanation to evacuate them. Meanwhile, Alphys had sent an alert to all else remaining, and monsterkind heeded her. 

Not everyone made it out in time. After unpacking what Toriel and Papyrus already explained, many humans had offered their unconditional help to find you. Alongside SOUL, Asgore established HEART, the Home Excavation and Recovery Team, which worked through the ruins to rescue anyone left behind. No one would be left unaccounted for.

“There are still people they can’t find,” you said somberly, and then a happy glimmer lit your eyes, “but a few more monsters showed up that no one expected. People that had been . . . forgotten.” 

Sans dared to let hope spark blue in his left eye. Through bated breath, he asked, “like . . . who?” 

You wracked your brain. “I don’t know their names,” you said. “A few scientists, a businessman . . . MK’s twin sister.”

Goner Kid. The machine beside him beeped when his magic pulsed faster than it should. 

“shut up, i’m fine,” he hissed and sat up straighter. “is that . . .” He hesitated, eyelight dimming. “did they find . . . anyone else?”

Your auburn eyes deepened, and it was enough of an answer. A resigned nod bobbed his head.

“They’re still looking,” you said. “I talked to dad—Asgore. He remembers now about your brother. I told him everything you did for me, and for Asriel. What you did for everyone, really. He’s grateful, Sans, like . . . tears in his eyes happy.” You tittered at your next thought. “I think he wants to knight you or something.” 

Sans snorted. “no way,” he said enthusiastically. “absolutely not. he damn well pressured me enough into the old man’s judge gig; i do not have the shoulders for another title.”

“What, ‘Sir Sans’ doesn’t have a nice ring to it?”

“i am a fan of alliteration,” he answered pensively. “maybe if he can tack on an adjective, like ‘sir sans the sedentary’ or . . . ‘sir sans the science man . . . s.’” 

“Sir Sans the Sensational?” 

“sir sans the slam.” He threw you a finger gun. “dunk on that, kid.”

You snickered. “You know how dad gets, though,” you went on. “He’s on a mission now. There’s still hope we’ll find him.”

Sans nodded, and for once he allowed himself to feel that hope. It was timid, and it was terrifying, but he had already reached the light at the end of this long tunnel. Only one more step and it would consume him fully.

As you brushed your thumb across his phalanges, your smile slowly fell.

“Sans,” you said, “there’s something really important I need to ask you.”

The skeleton searched you uncertainly. His mind dashed to the machine, to the final confrontation with Asriel, how he had come to retrieve his soul, how he had escaped the void with a task. If you accused him of manipulating you, it would not be unfounded, regardless of his motivations, regardless of the outcome. His eye lights dimmed. 

“well, shoot, kid,” he responded. “go for it.”

Your brow furrowed as if the thought were painful. Then, you gripped your broken leg and swung it around to rest across his lap.

“Will you sign my cast?” you burst.

Sans froze as if an error message had shorted his brain. Then, he chuckled from that place deep inside him, the laugh you liked most, the one that only happened when you had subverted his expectations beyond the bar. He grimaced past it and chortled, “ouch, kid; you’re breakin’ my funny bones, here.”

You held out a marker.

“permanent ink,” he noted. “dunno if i can handle that kind of responsibility.”

Once he had caught his breath, he eyed the wild graffiti incredulously. Where on earth would he sign it? Undyne had already carved her name across one half and Papyrus the other. Every other inch had been filled with good luck wishes, drawings, and signatures, from King Asgore himself to the humblest Froggit.

“eh, that’s okay,” he said with an easy smirk. “i think i’ve left enough of a mark on ya already.”

“But I saved you a spot!”

You had to search for a moment but finally you pointed out a tiny box by your knee with the small acronym “VIP” written just above it. 

His grin widened. 

“‘kay,” he said. 

He was wise enough to shrug with one shoulder now before popping the cap off the marker and lazily sketching a skeletal smiley face in the enclosure. You giggled with satisfaction. Then, perhaps hesitantly, he took your wrist in his hand. The breath in your lungs lingered as a circle appeared in black on the soft skin below your palm. Zero.

Your fingers traced the new counter to replace your old one. Maybe one day when you were older, you would have it tattooed there. For now, the gesture spoke more than words could. You returned the gentle smile in his eyes.

“gonna be a real treat teleporting you to your room and back when we get home,” he mused dryly. He punctuated his statement with the sealing click of your marker cap. “ain’t nothin’ handicap-accessible about those stairs.”

As he handed it back to you, your face sobered again in earnest. You slid the pen into the pocket in your hospital gown, stalling. 

“I do have something I want to tell you,” you said.

Sans eyed you expectantly. The sun had shifted down to highlight his bandaged chest and captive arm. Everything you had put him through, all he had done for you, only further embittered the taste of your next words.

“I think,” you said slowly, “I’m going to move in with mom . . . this time.”

“oh.” 

An invisible weight dragged down on his shoulders, heavy with too many emotions to place. Confusion, sadness, regret. Heartache. He failed to answer why the decision had caught him off guard when the reasons seemed so obvious now. He pondered his response, struggling to hide the painful disappointment that crawled through his marrow. 

“that . . . would be good for her,” he said hoarsely at long last. He cleared his throat. “yeah. makes sense. especially now, with your memories and all.” He avoided your eyes another pensive moment. “you’ll probably want your stuff, then. heh, clothes won’t fit for a while, though—”

Suddenly you were hanging off him, your chin tucked into the nape of his neck, your arms around his shoulders. 

Sans didn’t understand why he was crying. You weren’t leaving him forever. You would be living right down the road. He would still see you. He would still take you out for burgers and stargazing and summer nicecream beach trips. You would still have movie marathons and sit on the porch swing to watch the sunset. You would still be his kid . . . wouldn’t you? 

He wrapped both arms around you, sling and all. Even though it hurt like hell, the alternative would have broken him.

“you come over or spend the night whenever you want, okay?” he wept. “call me if you get nightmares. heck, call me if you just want to talk. i don’t give a damn what time it is. and . . . and be nice to your mom, okay? don’t give her that attitude i saw earlier. you can be a real piece of work when you’re upset and she doesn’t deserve that. a-and . . .” He choked on his next words. “don’t . . . don’t forget i love you. please. i might be a cynical bastard but i love you so much it hurts. i really do.”

Now you were crying. You could hear the plea in his voice not to leave him and most of you answered in kind. After everything you had been through together, leaving his side—even for a moment—had become almost unthinkable. 

It couldn’t be helped. You knew that and you hated it but it would be for the best. Your adopted mother and father, though separated, recognized who you really were now. Asriel had finally come home. Choosing to live with Sans over Toriel now would be a crime far more cruel.

You agreed to his terms a hundred times over.

The two of you sobbed into a wet mess in each other’s arms. Finally, finally, after ages resisting, he couldn’t handle the teeth in his chest any longer. You helped him reposition the sling, and he held your hand instead. From inside his blue-flushed eye sockets, those bright lights peered through the tears in your own red-rimmed eyes.

“hey,” he said gently with a voice like gravel. “we’re gonna be okay. all right?”

You nodded.

He reached out a thumb and wiped the remaining saltwater from your eyelashes.

“i’m here for you,” he said. “i’ll always be here for you. where you live won’t ever change that.” He swallowed back another surge of tears and hissed, “heck if i’m not gonna miss you, though.”

“Me too,” you breathed.

“Frisk?” called Toriel. She popped her head cautiously into the room. “Come, now; let me take you back to your room. You should be resting, and so should Sans.”

“Okay, mom,” you answered shakily.

You bent in for another terribly long, though bitterly short embrace. He held you to his heart with the intent to keep you there forever if he could . . . but he could not. So instead, he settled for your shoulders at arm’s length and smiled a loose, endearing scrawl of a grin. He cupped your face in his hand. 

“you’ll always be my kid, right?” he asked through a stone in his throat.

You nodded and melted your cheek into his bony palm. You remembered the first time he had done this, when you were small enough in age to match your stature, how it had been frightening and surprising and heartwarming in one. Now, you could only describe the feeling as “home.” 

“I love you, Sans,” you finally told him, and you realized all at once you never had.

“i love you too, frisk.”

For the first time since falling down, you allowed yourself to believe it.

NOTES

YAY, resolution! Next is the epilogue. <3

I hope you enjoyed! If you have thoughts, I love hearing them.

Past shimmering magic and the inner turmoil of a hundred souls, another heart-ached voice cried out. Its miserable, forsaken ballad reverberated across your ancient bond. You clung to Sans’ hand like a lifeline. You knew who waited for you beyond the veil. More than ever, you wanted to save him, though words had never been enough. 

“Asriel,” you called.

His winged form faded into sight among hazy, darkened rainbows. His muzzle hid in his claws. He appeared confused, scrambled, as if all his motivations had fallen out of sight. The souls that had become him no longer listened. They had filled him with emotions beyond anger and hate and abandoned him to face his demons.

In all his terrible majesty, the frightening creature Asriel had become did not deter you. When you glanced back for reassurance, Sans released his grip with an encouraging nod. You stepped as near as you could and touched a small hand to Asriel’s shoulder.

“Azzy . . .” you said more dearly.

“What . . . what did you do?” he murmured. Behind his talons, his eyes shone with sadness, confusion, and anger. “What’s this feeling?”

“It’s okay,” you chose to reassure him. “I’m here.”

“No. NO!” he snarled and tore away. “I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone!”

A hundred tiny comets gathered at his hands. You took a step back, knowing too well the rain of destruction that followed. With a single push of his arms, those projectiles charged you like a murder of crows after scraps. They whizzed like fireworks past your head, fanning wild the burnt umbre of your hair. You followed the steps you had always taken to avoid their pattern, but this formation was different. Without thinking, you dodged one bullet directly into the path of another.

Sans pulled you out of the way with less than a moment to spare. With a crack and blue flash, his shortcut shifted both of you just a few yards from a meteor shower and cosmic annihilation. Your arms clung to his, shaking. This time, you were truly grateful he had stepped in to save you from the treacherous walk along your tightrope.

“Why?” Asriel snapped. “Why do you like playing with him more than me?!”

The magic that had once immobilized Sans outside this dreamspace now crushed him. Pain splintered through every fiber of his body. Though he resisted, Asriel’s raw, merciless strength forced him out of your hold to his knees. One bone snapped, then two. If he could breathe he might have screamed or even begged, anything beyond the wild silent grimace seizing him now. Bright stars burst behind his darkening eyes. Red began to spark and burn bright in his chest. 

“Stop!” you yelped. “You’re killing him!”

Asriel certainly knew. A rage more personal than you had ever witnessed gnarled his face. His razorlike claws curled to channel his magic with mounting pressure. Sans buckled under the torture running fissures through his bones. You dropped to his side and held his cracking form close.

You knew Asriel did it to hurt you. You knew he did it to break Sans’ determined spirit. There was nothing Sans could do to stop it. There was nothing you could do. There was no escape. 

You bit back your hopelessness. No. Giving up was exactly what Asriel wanted. Plenty of opportunity had passed to surrender, and now was not the time to relent. You pushed yourself firmly to your feet to chase one more chance.

“Get away from me,” Asriel growled as you approached again. He bared his teeth. “You think I won’t tear you apart?”

You clenched your fists and walked forward defiantly. 

“I said get away!”

You had already locked your arms around him.

The fury of his magic sputtered like an engine out of fuel. The invisible death grip crushing Sans squeezed tighter, then tighter . . . then slowly released. Asriel’s shoulders slumped.

Sans coughed dust and shuddered amid the red threads sewing him back together. For a long moment, he simply lay there, mind racing with shock and trauma and relief to be free of him. His natural sense for the inner soul, what he focused to ascertain your sins, tasted sour with malintent. Asriel had wanted him to hurt. He had wanted him to pay. 

“Let go,” growled Asriel. He had again curled into himself. “Let me win . . .” 

“Please,” you said. “Please, Azzy, you don’t have to do this anymore.”

“It’s the only way you’ll stay with me,” he protested. He hung his head over your shoulder. “I’m not ready for things to end.”

Sans bitterly rose, muttering several choice words that described “the prince of this world” a little less kindly.

“It doesn’t have to,” you said into the great emblem on Asriel’s chest. “It can keep going. You and me, into the sunset, on the surface.”

“No,” he said. “I can’t. I’ll be a heartless little flower running around the Underground, all alone, forever.” Tears sped down his face. “I’m so afraid, Chara.”

His broad, frightening pauldrons and sharp talons retracted. As his silhouette shrank in more than posture, a small, sobbing boss monster child in a green striped sweater took his place. He clung to you as if letting go would untether him from port, sending him adrift into the maelstrom again.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. 

Asriel wept at length on your shoulder. 

As he watched, a realization both blistering and chilling crept over Sans’ soul. After everything, his great and terrible adversary had been nothing more than a frightened child. He set his teeth and bit his tongue, every inch haunted by the phantom pains of snapping apart. Was any context enough to forgive him?

From the mist of his memory, Toriel emerged. He remembered her grief, her loneliness, the children she had lost. He thought of you, how you had loved the soulless flower enough to save him, even though you couldn’t remember why. 

His heart calmed. If he could reconcile anything, it was that he loved you more than he wanted to hurt him.

Eventually, Asriel dried his eyes and smiled at you faintly. “I always was a crybaby, wasn’t I?”

You nodded. “Just a little.”

He surveyed you as if you had returned from the dead—and for all accounts and purposes, this was true. “Is it really you?” he asked. “Are you really . . . Chara?”

You pondered this for a long moment and for many long moments to come. Chara was the name you had been given at the start of your journey. It was this name that fueled the fire behind Asgore’s law, this name that had given weight to Wingdings’ final experiment, this name that had led Asriel down misery’s path. What were you if not the culmination of your experiences? All you had remembered could not be unwritten. And yet someone had reminded you that who you once were and who you could be were two entirely different things. You were not tethered to your ghosts. The road ahead was yours to choose.

You met Sans’ gaze over your shoulder. He stood a safe distance away, hands pocketed, even if his posture were tense. His left eye burned brighter than the right, at the ready, apprehensive but following your lead. Trust. Even when you lost sight of yourself, he believed in you. He always would. You wanted to be that person.

You wanted to deserve it.

“I go by Frisk now,” you said.

Sans’ burning eye sparked with blue and gold like fireworks. 

Asriel studied the emotions passing between you. Bittersweetness tainted his smile.

“I was so jealous,” he said, “of you two. I still am. It’s . . . childish, isn’t it?”

“an ass-toot observation,” Sans muttered under his breath.

To his surprise, Asriel actually chuckled, even if small and removed with sadness. Sans’ hackles relaxed marginally at the sound. Even at its coldest, his heart always melted to a child’s laughter.

“Sorry,” Asriel said bashfully, then continued, “I know I can’t have you all to myself. That’s not fair. I’m . . . not entirely sure what brought you together but . . . I can tell it was special.” His small frame shrank further. “I didn’t understand that the way I was ‘playing’ was hurting you . . . or maybe I did. I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. And Sans, you were only protecting them. You were doing what I should have done. I’m so sorry.”

Sans teetered between accepting and refuting the apology. Then, he turned his eyes away, content to do neither. 

Asriel nodded knowingly.

“There’s no excuse for what I did,” he said. “I hurt you. I hurt so many people. Friends, family, bystanders . . . I understand if you can’t forgive me.”

Your heart sank to recognize his words. You knew what he planned to do and what it meant. Like every time before, he would break the barrier and return to the Underground’s depths while the rest of monsterkind walked on sandy beaches under a bright blue sky. You would forgive him, and it wouldn’t matter.

“You’ll do great,” he said quietly. “They believe in you.” His eyes drifted to Sans. “Both of you. Whatever you do . . . don’t give up.”

As Asriel’s young form ascended with mounting energy, Sans rejoined your side. 

When he had broken the barrier in the past, Sans only experienced the sensation of a colossal power falling around him. Every time, a great, bright light had enveloped him and when he opened his eyes, their long-coveted freedom waited just ahead. To be here, standing among every soul accumulating with fervor, radiating like the sun, streaking through the darkness like new stars—the vision was nothing short of phenomenal. 

He rested a hand on your shoulder. His eyes stared into the lights with the same enamoration you had felt roaming the magical streets of New Home. The instant you looked into his face, this moment that had become one of sadness came alive again. You smiled, thankful to share this with him, grateful to have him by your side.

As the barrier shattered into a thousand pieces, Sans’ rapture twisted into dark apprehension. The sight shook you. Shouldn’t he be happy?

Before you could ask him what was wrong, that familiar brightness overtook you more quickly than it ever had before and spat you out from this nightmare into the real world once again.

Your souls burst from Asriel like a flying fish from the water. They rocketed through the air in search of home, spinning around each other like sparklers in a gush of red glitter. Then, they found their marks. They took off like shooting stars, straight toward their empty shells.

The sound of his name called Sans back to life. It sounded spoken at a distance, shrilly, and in dramatic sobs begging him to wake up. The words grew louder until bouncing around his skull. He squirmed in a pair of bony arms that gripped him far too tightly.

“can’t . . . breathe,” he wheezed. He tapped out faintly, three slaps to the dirty, broken floor. “bruh . . .”

“SANS!” screamed Papyrus.

Sans gasped as his brother unsealed the vacuum in his ribcage. He coughed and gagged.

“FINALLY!” Papyrus wiped frantically at his face. “LAZYBONES. ALWAYS NAPPING.”

Sans blinked up at him from his lap, color rising. “were you cryin’?” he asked.

“NO!” said Papyrus. “I DON’T CRY! I JUST . . . CAUGHT SOMETHING IN MY EYE.”

A smile crept onto Sans’ face to recognize this age-old exchange. “what did you catch?”

“TEARS!”

Sans chortled, and Papyrus’ haughty façade quickly crumbled to join him. Skull to skull, arms around each other’s necks, their laughter came from a place much deeper than humor. It echoed through the overfilled halls until every monster in the Underground knew just how happy they were to be alive and together again. 

As their voices calmed to smiles, Sans fondly rubbed the smooth bone of his brother’s skull, the same way as he had when the stalk was only a bean. On an average day, Papyrus would have protested, but things were different now. 

Sans tallied his friends. They had flocked together around Asgore’s fresh hole in the wall, where he had sheltered your empty body. His relief dissipated. He climbed out of Papyrus’ arms and scrambled through rocks, debris, and cracked hallway floors. Just inside the group, he tripped and fell over his own shoelaces, but that did not stop him. He elbowed his way to the front past Undyne and Asgore on his knees. 

Hardly a breath stirred your chest, though subtleties of that new color had returned to your cheeks. A fresh breeze tickled your skin and sunlight glimmered across you with true, unabated warmth. Birds whistled a disjointed chorus into your ears. Though your new name danced around your head in many voices, only one drew you out from the reverie. 

“frisk? frisk!” Sans snapped his fingers in front of your eyes. “c’mon, kid. don’ scare me any more than you gotta.”

You pushed his hand away. “Back up or get chucked on,” you gulped. You rolled over and buried your head in your arms, fighting the urge to expel your guts all over the broken floor. Your vision swam. As the memory of today’s events unfolded behind your eyes, however, you bolted upright and swung your head around. 

“The barrier,” you said.

“Broken,” Toriel answered, gently brushing the hair off your forehead, “with thanks to you . . . Frisk.”

Her touch had felt different, familiar and knowing, timid and shaking. In the dampened, ocean-salted fur of her cheeks bled an aching recognition. Without doubt, she saw the truth of who you really were, even if she didn’t understand it. You opened your mouth.

“Mom?” 

Every face turned toward the flower bed. 

Sans’ clenched your shoulder, then, trepidly, he helped you stand. Your eyes, so bright, so nearly crimson, widened to brand this sun-crisped sight on the inner pages of your soul. Your determination swelled red hot until overflowing.

There, among emerald leaves and amber petals, stood Asriel. 

He looked just as he had the day you met, daylight burning in a familiar halo off pale white fur. His hands, small, frightened, and confused, held his attention. One paw retracted to clutch his heart, as if something unexpected resided there, as if for the first time he felt alive and whole and real.

“Why am I . . . here?” he asked breathlessly. “What is this inside me? Who . . .”

A moment of awestruck silence filled the passage. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Sans burst out laughing. He chuckled like a pull string doll, arms clutching his stomach with relief and joy and perhaps a slightly twisted sense of humor. Papyrus raised a cold hand to slap him upside the head but before he could, Sans pointed a bony finger at Asriel.

“you stole your own soul, you idiot,” he laughed. 

Asriel blinked. “Huh?”

Before he could slip in another word, you had flung your arms around him and tumbled him down into a knot. Leaves, pollen, and petals burst into the air as if to punctuate the act, or perhaps to celebrate it. You nuzzled into the bright fur of your long lost friend, your brother, here, alive, saved. 

Toriel and Asgore soon rushed into the fray. How they felt about each other didn’t matter. Their children had returned. Their children were alive. They sobbed and smiled and questioned reality, but whatever the truth, none of you wanted it to end. You lay there happily engulfed, your lost family whole again at last. 

Soon your friends had piled in to create a pile of bones and scales and fur. Undyne, Alphys, Papyrus . . . you opened your eyes to look for Sans. 

He stood apart, hands pocketed. Though he hadn’t followed, his pinprick eyes watched you fondly over a smile never stronger, never truer. At that moment you knew: it was Sans who had walked your brother home. Somehow, he had discovered the answer and followed through . . . for you. Thankful tears filled your eyes. You should have never doubted him. You outstretched your hand and called his name. He took a bashful step forward. 

Suddenly, he froze. Deep below his feet, seismic shudders warped and churned. Their volume and intensity expounded until stones quivered by the soles of his shoes. His phone vibrated, clattering against his phalanges in a life or death intelligence check against the dungeon master. The results snuffed the lights from his eyes. His smile ran away screaming.

“What’s wrong?” you asked.

“we have to go,” he breathed. 

Asgore rose from the pile. “Sans, what is happening?” he asked.

Sans snatched your outstretched hand and pulled you from the tangle as well. To Asgore, he said, “everybody needs to leave the underground, now.” His eyes dashed wildly through a mist of sprinkling dust. Hairline cracks were spiraling through the floor, walls, and ceiling, still deciding where best to split apart. “we’re outta time. come on, kid, we gotta move.”

When Sans began running with you in the opposite direction, Toriel launched to her feet with dismay. She clung to Asriel, eyes wide with fright. “Where are you taking them?” she cried.

“trust me!” Sans called back, though regret speared his throat. “run!”

The royals' leap of faith became easier as dirt worked itself loose from the overhead stones in silver drapery. Asgore's booming voice ushered everyone out, a more effective siren than Sans’ quiet cello.

Halfway into the rumbling Core, you still clung to his hand, afraid but trusting. “Where are we going?” you finally asked. “Sans, why are we going the other way?”

Sans flinched as he tried and failed a third time to take a shortcut. The atmosphere swam with an increasing disregard for all laws of physics. The pathways jittered as if each step could fall through or fly away. Thankfully, their footing remained stable, even if deja vu ran their heads ragged.

“when i was in the void,” Sans explained through huffs of breath, “dings said the rift was on the verge of bustin’ wide open.” 

The two of you broke from the Core into MTT Resort. Mettaton’s statue lay in pieces, and you splashed through its rippling puddle on the marble floors. As you hurried onward, Sans quickly urged what lingering monsters remained to flee the underground.

The world trembled more ferociously the farther you traveled.

“one more broken barrier and he couldn’t hold it back anymore.” He led you down the stairs, across Hotland’s quickest path. “but the machine in the basement can stop it.”

You passed the Lab. A hard crack split that edifice down the middle and southward through the plateau. Hot steam billowed threateningly out the fissures, which you dodged following Sans’ deft footsteps. The heat nearly blistered you; no doubt the smallest misstep would have seared straight through your boots. At a glance down the stairs, you could see that the River person was no longer present—and neither was the river.   

Just before reaching the cave to Waterfall, an explosion threw you viciously to the cooling ground, where you collided with Sans in a helpless pile. The two of you turned back to the Lab in horror. 

The building hovered in pieces, slowly lifting in an arc from its shattered foundation. The surrounding earth collapsed into the bubbling lava, splashing and steaming as if a volcano had erupted. A hollow in the molten rock folded inward below an accordion of walls and floors, eaten whole by a crisp fracture slicing reality like a shattered mirror. The Rift was expanding.

“to your feet, kid!” Sans barked.

You scrambled out from your shock and kicked off the ground to follow him.

“I thought you couldn’t fix it!” you shouted above the crackle of earth that chased you.

“dings told me what i was missing,” Sans answered. 

“Which is . . . ?”

He hesitated. “i’ll show ya when we get there.”

Clouds of dark mineral dust showered down from the quaking ceiling. Around your feet, ancient crystals and loosened stone scattered and jostled as if you sped through a rock tumbler. Together you struggled through chaos and occasional monsters running past. You wondered if you should warn them about the rift awaiting them.

Sans guided you through a field of glowing mushrooms, which flickered and faded and illuminated again as if time itself combed their stems. You jumped rivers, slipped between waterfalls, cut corners through unfamiliar caves. He knew this place better than you ever did. 

The cold air nipped at your ankles first. Then, the yawning mouth to Snowdin glittered bright with a blinding cloud of stirred snow. Relief like the scent of familiar incense curled around you a second too soon. Cracks rocketed into ravines in the stone above. They shot ahead to the far opening, where the cavern arch began to give way.

Sans' fingers finally sparked with blue. He set his teeth.

“hold on tight,” he said.

Just as the ceiling snapped and transmuted into plunging rubble, a shocking cyan portal scooped you up and spat you out into a dark room. 

Cold tile pressed against your human skin, and the scent of earthen mildew crawled through the air. The basement. A nearby clatter told you Sans already searched for the light switch.

Under that single fluorescent bulb, there was no hiding his panic. The distant tremors were growling slowly louder, only minutes behind you. Though the earth had yet to tremble here, the sound alone quaked his bones. His shaking hands missed the outlet twice before plugging in the machine.

“Sans,” you said.

He tore back the curtain. That roughened, scorched jumble of metal hardly saw light before his left hand slapped the power switch on its side. It groaned to life with opposition, but once it got used to the idea, it hummed a steady note. The frequency curdled your blood.

“Sans,” you repeated.

His fingers trembled on the keyboard with hesitation, then dashed across the keycaps faster than you could type. Pixels on the screen scrolled through data more quickly than could be read. Its signs and symbols matched the ones you had seen him use when scanning for anomalies: stars, bombs, skulls . . . hands.

“SANS,” you snapped.

Finally he turned to you, though his head hung low on his neck. 

For a moment, nothing but tremors, magic, and electricity shuddered the air. Your hair felt to stand on end. 

“Why am I here?” you croaked. 

This made no sense. It went against everything you knew about Sans to drag you back into the fray. If the Underground were truly moments from collapsing, he should have urged you out with the others. The puzzle had been clicking together, but the missing pieces hid in his pockets.

A hundred emotions crossed his face, emotions he had once guarded from you behind a grinning mask. You couldn’t decide which was worse. He skirted around the back of the machine, where he pried open a dusty compartment. Inside were an empty reservoir and a fogged out fuel gauge that rested on zero. 

“thought this was for regular ol’ magic,” he said quietly. “heh . . . putting gas in the diesel tank ‘s what i was doin’.”

You eyed him uneasily.

After a long, long second, he met your stare guiltily. 

“it doesn’t need magic or electricity, or gas or diesel neither,” he said. The words left him distraught. “it needs . . . you.”

Your eyebrows tried to touch. “I don’t understand.”

“determination!” he nearly burst. His arms spread wide as if to take flight. “a mighty heaping helping of bloody red determination.”

The statement didn’t strike you as worrisome until you saw just how upset it made him. He paced back and forth, breathing fast like a racehorse. His hands balled into fists until they shook and dug their knuckles into his forehead. Blue magic leaked from his left eye.

The realization snuck up behind you. Even if the lab hadn't been destroyed, Alphys had already run through most of her supply treating fallen monsters who would become amalgamates. Only siphoning from a source could supply determination now--directly from a human soul. You had no idea what that meant for you, but by the way Sans acted now . . .

“stars fucking damn it!” he snarled. 

He braced himself against the machine and kicked it once, twice, three times. Then he gripped the corners more gently, and his shoulders heaved.

The tremors were growing louder. 

“kid, it could kill you,” he breathed through a mess of tears. He pressed his forehead to the metal. “you could die and even then it might not be enough to work.”

Plaster and dust exhaled from the ceiling.

“but the rift doesn’t care,” he went on. “it won’t stop with the underground or the surface. if we let it go, sooner or later . . .”

Your heart skipped into your throat.

“i don’t know what to do,” he said. He slumped to sit in front of the temporal flux manipulator and cradled his face in his hands. Angry tears slipped through his phalanges. “i’m sorry.”

You watched him shudder under that impossible weight. Your eyes lifted to the splintering ceiling. Your ears turned to the quaking earth. Your tongue tasted dust in the air. Your nose breathed the scent of dirt and magic. Your mind raced with everywhere you had been, everything you had seen, everyone you had met and learned to love.

Sans felt your human warmth draw near. Behind his fingers, a brightening glow of red permeated the bone. His face twisted alongside his heart in knots.

Your soul pirouetted above your hands just as it had for Asgore, only this time no self-sorry streams decorated your cheeks. A smile lingered instead, melancholy but determined.

“frisk, no,” said Sans. He took your wrists and pushed them back toward your chest. “i can’t make you do this.”

“You’re not making me do anything,” you said. 

“there’s no tellin’ what’ll happen,” he said quickly. “even if it works, we could go back before the barrier was broken and never get out again. whole thing could rewind to the day we clipped the timeline.” Pain clutched his eye sockets. “you and asriel . . . you two could stay dead.”

“What about your brother?” you asked. 

Sans grimaced and blinked another swell of tears from his eye sockets. “there’s a chance,” he said, “maybe the only chance in the world he’ll come back. but it could kill him too. truth be told . . . we’re flyin’ blind.”

Your bright red heart bled for him in your hands. You knelt down only a breath away. “You saved my brother,” you said. “Let me try to save yours.”

Sans shook his head miserably. He still clung to your wrists, though faintly, barely holding on. 

The basement floor’s ceramic tiles began to separate and collide, spitting up caulk and crumbs of stone. Flakes of plaster landed on your shoulders and in your hair.

“We’re running out of time,” you said as calmly as you could when your heart rattled your ribs like prison bars. “It’s either some of us, or none of us. That’s the choice, Sans.”

He hung his head, knowing it to be true.

“I’m determined to do this,” you said. The corner of your mouth twitched into a knifelike smile. “You can’t stop me.”

As he searched your eyes, his soul swelled with conviction, burning hot and red like engine coals. He faltered then, mind rushing with a thought he hadn’t considered, a truth he hadn’t faced until dying repeatedly at the fiery claws of a bitter demon. Determination: the power to stay alive, to undo death, to spool back time until you hit that god damn bullseye. 

“and i’m determined not to let you die,” he said. 

He flattened a hand to his chest, then tugged out his soul by an invisible string. Though scars clenched its shell in a thousand barbed teeth, it burned brighter than the North Star. A brilliant red overtook most of its form, more vivid and overwhelming than he expected, even if the edges whitened like frosted glass.

The sight of it overwhelmed you. Never had you seen a soul like this. Never had you imagined his to be so hauntingly beautiful. 

He lifted you to your feet and pulled you close. The walls around you were crumbling, but your souls hummed strong and true. 

“i promised to see ya through,” his voice lilted into your ear. “so let’s do this together.”

The moment you understood what he planned to do, you shook your head adamantly. “No, you can’t,” you said.

“yes, i can,” he insisted. “ya always try to do everythin’ yourself. just this once . . . let me help you.”

Suddenly, there it was: the truth you had been denying since the start. It had never been the resets at the core of what hurt him. What had truly wedged you apart had been your drive to shoulder everything like a lone wolf. When you had first decided to rewind the clock, you had done it without a word to anyone. When you had sought to save Asriel, you had pursued it alone. Even when Sans had finally forced your hand, you had resisted his aid at every step. It had crushed him to dust. It had broken bridges in Waterfall. It had cast him into the void. It had nearly driven you to darkness, until once again he had reached out into the encroaching night and saved you. 

You held on a moment longer despite the urgency raining down in gray clouds. If he didn’t make it, you wanted to remember how it felt.

“Okay,” you said.

Programs sequenced into action with a few more entries into the data pad, which shuddered the machine into a readying hum. He tied your souls to those machinations in ways you didn’t quite understand: magic threads both warm in the pit of your soul and cold where they spooled into the darkness of an empty chamber. 

He lifted his hand to rest on that all too familiar lever and stilled to find yours already there. You smiled confidently, ready with a single nod. His grip gained courage, and together, you pulled down into gear. Lines of data poured down the cracked monitor. The earth beneath you shook harder. A ravine split through the ceiling. Everything went white and still.

NOTES

One more chapter and then epilogue. :') We're nearly there.

Thank you so much for reading.

From a single strip at the Underground’s heart, Waterfall tunneled away into a boneyard mess of caves. In one direction, the passage to Hotland sprawled in mushroom-light mazes and a boulder choke disguising Tem Village. In the other, a quiet bubble harbored a simple mouse, neck deep in plans to retrieve a wedge of crystallized cheese. Between them, from a silver door that had only been there sometimes, Sans stepped out into a flood of bioluminescence.

Though a door latched shut behind him, dark, damp stone replaced the surface he reclined against now. Its cold, unyielding texture met his fingertips, a reminder that there would be no second visit. 

He clutched the spindly metal bars of that unnaturally gray birdcage. He tucked his chin over the iron rung at its peak, hardly dousing the light of the small monster soul trapped inside. 

The task set before him was unconscionable. Even if he managed to survive . . .

“i can’t do that,” he had resisted. “i can’t kill Frisk!”

“They shouldn’t even be alive,” said Wingdings.

The words took Sans by surprise. He set his heels despite the encroaching void and a minute hand nearing his final stroke of midnight.

“oh, but ya want me to take this soul all the way back to asriel, huh?” he said. “make sure he survives? double standard, if y’ask me.”

"I didn't say it was fair,” Wingdings hardly breathed. His eyes gained urgency. “The human . . . might survive, if they're determined enough. But after you pull the lever . . .”

At that, Sans’ anger siphoned away, leaving behind a fear much broader than the fate of one human child. Their mistake had set so many events into motion. Lives had been built and destroyed, paths forged and buried. The machine could rewrite the course of everything as easily as it could leave the butterfly effect intact. They could remain here in the present or be sucked back to the day it all began. With a phenomenon this unpredictable, just about anything could happen . . . but whatever world they left behind, at least it might survive.

“if i do use their soul to run the machine,” Sans said more calmly, “what’ll happen to asriel, then? to me? to the underground? heck, what’ll happen to you?”

It was clear to Sans by the frown on Wingdings’ face that his brother had already considered this question. Despite his ingenuity, the once royal scientist only shook his head. 

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I do know what’ll happen if you don’t.”

In the present, Sans beat his fist against the rock behind him. Why did it have to be so fucking twisted? Why his Frisk? And why did he have to be the one to do it? Maybe it didn’t have to work out like this. Maybe there was more time than Dings thought. Maybe he could find another way. 

His phone buzzed rhythmically at his waist. He pulled it from his coat pocket and looked at the screen. The image of Papyrus illuminated those shadowy cavern walls below several missed call notifications. Sans took a deep, shaking breath, then another, and answered.

“pup . . .”

“SANS!” Papyrus shouted. “I’VE BEEN TRYING TO REACH YOU FOR HOURS!”

“oh.”

“I’M NEARLY TO NEW HOME. A FRIEND HAS INFORMED ME THAT THE HUMAN IS IN TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE DANGER! IS THAT TRUE?!”

Sans nearly broke down then and there. Though seeing Wingdings again had restored many of the deeper cracks in his soul, it still felt fragile, even more when considering the path ahead of him. 

“more than true,” he whispered.

A patch of silence followed. Sans dropped his cheek to rest on birdcage bars. 

“tell me it’s gonna be all right,” he murmured into the receiver.

“Sans . . . where are you?” Papyrus asked, more gently than was typical. 

“just tell me, please.”

“It’s . . .” Papyrus sighed. “It is going to be all right. Now, WHERE ARE YOU?”

Hearing the words in his brother’s voice quelled Sans’ fear, enough to return strength to his limbs. He lingered on the phone a moment longer, as if the connection truly placed him at Papyrus’ side.

“meet you there,” he said.

You followed in Asgore’s shadow, watching the folds of his cape sway and collide like cattails in the wind. His silhouette consumed yours. He could hold all of you in one hand, let alone the tiny red soul he sought to claim.

Past the end of that long hallway mirror of the Ruins, the barrier undulated with powerful magic. Its waves of golden white licked the crackled stone as if in search of escapees. It contoured Asgore’s silhouette in a crisp white line as he turned to face you. 

That all-too-familiar smile prickled the fur along his muzzle. Looking up into his apologetic eyes, you remembered his hands on your shoulders, his all-encompassing embrace that threatened to lose you in his fur. The macaroni pictures, the crayon drawings, the sweaters . . . the buttercup pie. You shuddered. 

“Human,” said the king of all monsters. His powerful voice trembled, and the earth trembled with it. “It was nice meeting you. . . . Goodbye.” 

He held his trident firmly in both hands and lowered his head . . . but a stoplight glow kept his chin from falling too far. There you stood, hands outstretched, red soul hovering above your palms. 

“I’m the last one,” you said.

Asgore stared at the heart-shaped spirit as if entranced. Its warmth illuminated your fingers with ruby firelight. It was in the crimson glint of your eyes, however, that he became lost, captured in the clutch of a ghost from years long gone.

“Do I . . . know you?” he asked, bewildered both by the situation and the question itself. 

“Please, take it,” you said. Tears fell down your face. “It’s no good for anything else.”

Asgore’s eyes widened with recognition. “Chara . . . ?”

Intense heat flared in the hallway behind you. Before Asgore could say anything more, a brilliant ball of flame had launched him into the cavern wall. Flecks of gray stone spat out among a field of clouds. 

You swung to face the spellcaster. Toriel stood framed in the doorway, her face scrunched in a scowl like a snarling lion. One smoking arm remained outstretched, clenched in a fist. 

“What a miserable creature,” she growled, “torturing such a poor, innocent youth.”

You hadn’t known what path the timeline had taken or whether your friends would convene . . . yet Toriel had arrived, exactly the same as before. Though you may have jokingly called her “mom,” the name now rang through your head with the purity of a windchime in the breeze. 

Undyne, Alphys, and Papyrus appeared after her, along with a swath of others you had met along the way. You wanted to tell them to turn back, that you did not deserve them, that if they had known the demon you truly were, they never would have wanted to be your friend. 

Your color drained. As they approached, a web of vines crawled after them along the dark ceiling and cavern floors. 

You ran to Asgore, who sat slumped amid rubble and a brand new hallway door in the shape of his back. He grumbled in discomfort. A layer of dust coated his royal robes and golden mane, which he shook like a dog. You slid to your knees beside him.

“Hurry, please!” you blubbered to the stunned monster king. You proffered your soul as if it were on fire. “There isn’t a lot of time . . . !”

Toriel snatched you back by the shoulders. 

“What has come over you, my child?” she demanded. “Do you not know what he means to do with it?” 

“Mom, I . . .” 

“Frisk.” Her eyes had begun scanning the room in fright. “Where is Sans?”

The path to the barrier gave Sans more difficulty than expected. The last time he had attempted these roads with fewer than two shortcuts, he had been a century younger and taking his time, mushroom hunting with young Papyrus. His limbs lagged behind his will. His breath rattled in his chest. Though his fingers slipped against that birdcage no one remembered, he refused to release its colorless patina bars. Everything depended on this.

He took what natural shortcuts he could—river ferries and elevators—but even then, the trip cost more time than he had bargained. At long last, he had reached the innards of Asgore’s home in the capital. He ran, huffing and puffing, down the golden tiles of the Last Hallway. 

Even as he sped past, his heart ached to remember your meeting here. The flare of sunlight on your head, the even brighter smile on your face, the secret passwords on your tongue. . . . The memory of that pure soul compared to the corrupted one he had read beside the rift overwhelmed him, and he paused. He touched a hand to the white pillar that once occluded him.

Who were you now? Frisk? Chara? Both? If Chara truly were your forgotten name, if everything he knew about the tragedy of Asgore’s children had happened to you, such terrible memories weighed down on your tiny shoulders. It did not surprise him, then, that your violence had escalated to remember those horrors. Ferocious thorns had been hiding in the soft petal corona of your soul, and neither of you had known it.

Clinging tightly to the forgotten prison in his hands, he buried his sentiments and tore through vine-swathed hallways into a dark passage. He skidded to a halt just past the silvery stone archway to the barrier, where his bones clattered with shock.

The cavern pulsed in radiant waves like the steady spin of a lighthouse beacon. Twisting, thorny roots filled the cavern like a briar patch, and their position changed with every flash of light. Among the vicious mess of chloroplast, monster figures had been tangled, their souls nearly devoured. 

The dimming pinpoints of Sans’ eyes could not peel away from your small form, crumpled on the floor before a yellow flower. Your red soul snapped among his vines, barely shimmering in a ruby remnant before splitting apart into nothing.

Sans could not stifle the horror that clawed its way out his mouth. He nearly dropped the cage. 

Flowey turned to grin at him. “Trash day already?” he asked, spinning his head in a full circle. 

Sans shook. No. This couldn’t have happened. You couldn’t have fallen to that little heathen daisy so quickly. You couldn’t have lost your determination. If only he hadn’t lingered in the hallway. If only he had kept running . . . !

You blinked at the human soul still hovering in your outstretched hands. It glowed red, though not as brightly as it once did. Still alive. Still yours to give. Not torn to bits by a nihilistic plant.

Only moments ago, you had fallen to a flower, the same flower weaving his way into this chamber of darkness and light. Toriel’s hands rested heavily on your shoulders. Papyrus chattered away, as Asgore pleaded with Toriel to give him a second chance. While they were distracted, Flowey dug his way out of the earth, grinning deviously, ready to spring all over again.

Confusion waltzed with your mind, spinning you gently. You had experienced this rush backward a thousand times before. Just a short step in reverse to let you continue after falling or if you disliked the outcome . . . but you did not have the determination to do it now. You had intended to die. You had meant for one of two creatures to take your power and be done with it. 

It hadn’t been you. 

The world shifted. Time rushed away like the tide, back into the ocean depths. Darkness bled away into golden sunlit tiles and stained glass windows. Birds chirped among a distant rustle of leaves. The air danced with prisms for a fleeting moment before the world reappeared as it had only moments before.

Sans realized suddenly that he stood in the Last Hallway all over again. A glittering pocket of magic danced like a handheld star beside him, where he had touched the pillar and remembered you. It had not been there before.

Air filled his ribcage in jagged gasps. His soul burned as it usually did when you reset time, though somewhat gentler. His hands shook around the bars of that monochrome birdcage with fear, confusion, and exhilaration. 

He had just turned back time. He could feel it. And if that were the case . . .

He ran. He sprinted faster than ever to reach you, but you lay still on the floor again. Though uncertain how, and though it hurt him, he turned back the clock a second time. Then a third. Then a fourth. Every time, the flower tore apart your soul like a horror movie on repeat, until finally, Sans arrived one split second earlier. Your soul spun a circle above you as if hanging from a string, and a ring of white pellets had only begun readying itself to deliver the killing blow.

Before Sans knew what he was doing, he was charging Flowey through a rough shortcut, foot extended to drop-kick the weed down into his roots. That cursed dandelion’s shriek had never sounded so satisfying. Sans’ dragon skulls had already manifested over his shoulders, jaws aflame—but when they blasted blue-hot magic out their mouths, Flowey had already disappeared into the earth.

A whip of green struck the ground where Sans had stood. He skipped out of the way in the nick of time, then again, and again, and again. He punched his free hand to the ground, and a wave of long, white magic bones crashed down through the air like meteorites. They speared into the cave floor with enough force to run cracks through the ceiling. Clouds of rock sprinkled down onto his shoulders. Flowey’s grip on his friends and family slackened just an inch.

Flowey surfaced again, undamaged beyond a few frayed petals. 

Sans panted, his adrenaline quickly plunging. His bones began aching again, though his raging soul burned brightly through its seams. Sweat slipped down his skull into the neck of his shirt. He didn’t know if he could withstand this much longer. He did not know if his soul could survive another time jump.

“Ha,” chirped the little flower. “Looking pretty rough, there, old pal." His eyes glinted red within the skull-like hollows of his face. "Poor, flimsy little monster souls. Why bother trying? Even Chara was no match for me, and they were a million times stronger than you’ll ever be!”

Sans knew he was right. He did not have the full resilience of a purebred human. Even you had to try several times before making it past this bitter herb. Who in their right mind would bet on him: half blind, right arm nearly useless, only one HP? Just like every moment in his life, he would find a way to fuck this up. Just like every other time before, he would be useless to help. 

His hope dwindled down, as did the fire in his soul. He could not find the strength to evade the string of bullets shooting toward him, but they were serendipitously blocked by a fence of small white bones.

“DON’T LISTEN TO HIM, SANS!” said Papyrus through clenched teeth. “YOU. CAN. WIN!”

“We are here to help you,” said Toriel. “No matter what happens.”

“Statistically it’s impossible,” said Alphys, “b-but you’ve beaten the odds before! I know you can do it!”

“Fuck you, Sans,” said Undyne. 

Everyone looked at her. She shrugged.

“Sans,” said Asgore. “Listen to me.”

Sans clung to the bars of the birdcage more tightly, eyes glued to the smirking flower afar. 

“You are not just your father’s son,” said the king of the Underground. “You have more than magic running through your veins. Remember that . . . and stay determined!”

Sans’ white pupils snapped to Asgore’s blue and brown at once. The statement had struck him somewhere deep beyond the monster white shell of his soul, and still more words passed between them unspoken. Sans then dragged his gaze across all his friends, who looked back with steadfast confidence, even Undyne.

Flowey coiled down on himself, pretending to be scared. “Urgh, no!” he whimpered. “Unbelievable! This can’t be happening! I can’t possibly withstand all of you . . . you . . . !” His face contorted into his evilest grin. “Idiots.”

His vines snapped taut around every monster, and yet another thorny coil snatched Sans from the ground as well. Through ropes of green and brown, Sans watched your red soul go down the flower’s throat, sealed behind hungry white fangs within a golden crown. Then, everything became lost in a flash of white. 

Clang.

Sans moaned. Between that blitz of light and now, he had dropped to his hands and knees. His palms felt scorched—and dreadfully empty. Ahead of him, the last withering wisp of gray silver bars dissipated into the air as if made of smoke. Seeing it clawed the magic away from his bones with every mounting breath. His eyes became hollow. 

The cage was gone—really, truly gone. Not even a step backward in time could bring it back, and with it, Asriel’s soul. Sans felt the world bottom out. Had he really failed, after everything?

A voice cackled overhead. “Finally,” it said. “I was so tired of being a flower.” 

Sans looked upward and blanched. Aside from a few drawings you had scribbled out as a child, he had never witnessed this ungodly creature of countless souls. Sans had only been consumed by him, a coal block among many to fuel his hate. Now, Asriel Dreemurr hovered overhead in all his glory, raging with deathly power in a kaleidoscope of energy. No wonder you had nightmares.

Past the wreckage of their earlier fight, your body still lay heaped on the floor among stone and dead vines, seemingly asleep. As Sans crawled close, tears threatened to form. 

He bit them back. No. He needed to hope. He needed to dream. He needed to be determined that he could call you out from the darkness, just as you had done for him a hundred times. It was his turn, now. Everyone would make it to the other side . . . including Asriel. 

“Huh?” Asriel grunted as he caught wind of Sans below. “What are you still doing here? I ate your soul, you dirty lawn bag!”

“grass not,” said Sans as he stood, dusting the dirt from his jacket with his left hand.

“Ugh.” Asriel pinched his muzzle exasperatedly. “So annoying. How many times have you died now? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?” He thrust a rocket’s flare at Sans with a wicked smile. “Thirty-seven?!”

Sans gathered your body into his arms and stepped into a last-minute shortcut, safely away from that raw magical surge. After hiding your figure inside an Asgore-shaped wall hole, he flitted through the blue light of a portal once again. He reappeared in the air, directly in Hyperdeath’s path, only inches from his head. 

“bone apétit, fucker,” he said and threw a handful of small bones at Asriel’s face. Though they caused no significant damage, they certainly got his attention.

Sans landed on all fours and scrambled. Bullets, fireballs, shooting stars, and lightning strikes raged after him. They left craters in the ground and drove deeper cracks into the ceiling overhead. Stalactites fell and shattered. Sans dodged every one of them. His body thoughtlessly followed the part of him that knew how to survive but had no time to ask permission, so begged forgiveness instead. 

As Asriel Dreemurr took a moment to lift his hands, Sans struggled to catch his breath. His hood smelled of smoldering keratin. Holes had been burned through his sleeves. His body felt slick and ashen against his jacket’s cotton interior. The bones he had tossed like a scoop of dog biscuits into Asriel’s face had been the last magic he could muster. Whatever great power the prince of the Underground gathered now, Sans doubted he could survive it.

The world darkened. Sans could no longer see Asriel or the barrier, not even his hands if he raised them. Everything had become silent except the paddle of his own breath. 

A skull three times his size suddenly materialized from the shadow. In appearance, it reminded him of those he and his siblings had mastered, though its horns and features mirrored Asriel instead. It laughed in his face—a grim, bone-chilling sound like grating rocks—but Sans stood firm. Brilliant red rage and determination surfaced among the cracks of his soul. How dare Asriel steal from Papyrus? How dare he turn Sans’ own family magic against him?

Waves of light drew into the open bowels of its snakelike gullet. Debris ran past his ankles, recalling images of a lab in shambles, a brother consumed by a beast of timeless indifference. He braced himself, ready to dive into the darkness as he did then and save the ones that mattered most.

A flash of brightness burst over him once more. This time, it ripped the soul from inside him and shattered it into pieces.

His mind floated through an abyss, bursting with the fireworks of everything at stake. He thought of Papyrus, never seeing sunrise; Toriel, never knowing the love of a new family; Alphys, never seeing the true greatness inside herself; Undyne, never free to explore the world; Asgore, failing his people. He thought of you, swallowed in the belly of the very thing you had sought to save. He thought of the entire world, destroyed by the god of hyperdeath, eaten alive by a hungry rift in time. The pieces of his soul quivered in a glow of crimson, ready to disperse. 

*But it refused.

The shards sewed back together. A burst of bright red coursed through him like a new flame that had waited a lifetime to be struck. He had to live. He needed to live. He wanted to live! The darkness faded away, and soon the pulsing light of the barrier greeted his eyes once again.

He gaped at his shaking hands, eye sockets wide with confusion and amazement and, more than anything, determination. His soul felt aflame with a ruby-red blaze that forged the bleeding cracks of every pain, every hardship, and every sorrow into an armor stronger than the thickest alloy.

Asriel’s final form hovered ahead of him. Giant wings had sprouted from his back, flaring with blues, reds, greens, and purples. His teeth bared in needle points to rival Undyne’s, seething with fury and frustration. 

“YOU . . . GARBAGE BIN SKELETAL FREAK!” he screamed. “WHY? WHY CAN’T YOU DIE?!”

Sans realized very suddenly he couldn’t move. Asriel’s true power had run rampant through the air, cocooning him in a chrysalis of magic he could not escape. He struggled with no result. With no way to resist, Asriel’s attacks barreled into him again, and again, and again. Every time his brightly burning soul rebuilt itself, a little was lost along the way. 

“I can feel it,” Asriel growled with relish. “Every time you die, your grip on this world slips away. Every time you die, your friends forget you a little more. Your life will end here, in a world where no one remembers you.”

Sans thought of Windings, lost in a hell of the same description. He recalled how determined his brother had been to hold that same world together in one piece, forgotten or not. Sans could not fail him again, not here, not now, not after how hard Dings had tried, not when all his hopes were so invested in his success. His brother’s words rang through Sans' head, the last he would speak before the ghost of a gray door had separated them.

“I want you to know,” Wingdings had said, “I believe in you more than I believe in anyone else.”

“heh, yer jus’ tuggin’ my tibia . . .”

“For Tesla’s sake, Sans,” Dings snipped. “Can you just, for a second, let me spoon-feed your imperceptibly minuscule single-cell petri dish of a trait you call your self-esteem?” He took a deep breath and steadied. “I know it might seem like you’re my only option,” he said, “but you’re the best option I could have ever hoped for. My big brother. The one who sticks it out through thick and thin. The one I could always rely on to come through for me. You can do this. You can save everyone. I know you can. So, please . . . 

“. . . don’t give up.”

Sans closed his eyes and reached his heart out to Asriel’s amalgamation of souls. His friends and family were there somewhere. He could save them. They believed in him. Dings believed in him. His determination to save everyone bled through the confines of Asriel’s magic, and deep inside that monstrosity, something began to stir.

Darkness closed in and images of his friends materialized, though their faces could not be seen behind swimming, fragmented blurs of pitch. Toriel, Papyrus, Asgore, Alphys, and Undyne stood like statues in a ring around him. Under their breaths, they mumbled their deepest wounds aloud: loss, rejection, loneliness, guilt, and captivity. 

Sans stared up at his little brother’s towering silhouette, shaken to see him so reduced. 

“hey, puppy . . .” he began. He inched nearer. “‘member me?”

Papyrus did not acknowledge him beyond summoning a few bones, which promptly flew in his direction. They were nothing compared to what Asriel had been punting his way. Sans stood perfectly still to allow a large blue femur to pass harmlessly through his forehead, then teleported behind him. He wrapped his arms around his waist until his face lay cradled in the lower curve of his spine, as if it were fashioned to hold his head.

“is that any way to treat your big bro?” he asked quietly. He searched his head for his worst possible joke and turned to the remaining souls. “uh . . . w-whatcha all starin’ at?”  He whipped out a finger gun as nonchalantly as possible. “never metacarpal of skeletons before?”

A long, silent moment passed. Then, Papyrus groaned. So did Undyne. Toriel giggled alongside Alphys with a snort. Asgore only sighed. 

Sans beamed, then dodged what he saw as a well-deserved barrage of attacks from all five of his monster friends.

“hey, undies,” he said to Undyne past the quick flash of a blue spear. “i liked the tuna your piano. think you can teach me some scales?”

A similar response. Another wave of dangerous magic. 

“knock, knock,” Sans said to Toriel. A hand of fire tried and failed to snatch him off the ground. He brushed off the heat. “i’ll take that as a ‘who’s there’. it’s yer local sentry, sans gaster!”

Toriel mumbled incoherently, but her last words sounded clear: “. . . Sans Gaster who?”

“yeesh,” Sans said, tugging at the neck of his shirt. “and i thought we were friends!”

Toriel laughed, then, revealing her face in a glorious burst of joy. Papyrus groaned more loudly than ever into existence. 

“THAT’S ENOUGH BOONDOGGLING, SANS!” he shouted.

“i think you mean bone-doggling.”

“I DO NOT!” Papyrus stomped his foot.

With that, the rest of his friends returned to themselves, holding their stomachs or their heads in laughter. Sans wiped a joyful tear from his eye. By then, Papyrus had swept him off his feet into the tightest hug he could muster, which might have broken a rib were they more than specters. The remaining crew piled in: Toriel, Alphys, Asgore, even Undyne. In that one gesture, Sans’ soul swelled with hopes and dreams and burned brighter than ever.

“You’re d-d-doing great!”

“We’ve got your back, punk.”

“We believe in you.”

“heh . . . i’m rootin’ for me too, i guess,” Sans agreed bashfully.

“THAT’S THE SPIRIT,” Papyrus said, then lifted his eyes over Sans’ shoulder. “ONLY ONE MORE TO GO.”

As he said it, their images dissipated. Sans turned to follow Papyrus’ gaze. Another figure stepped from the shadow, eyes burning red through a shifting black cloud. A blood-red knife glinted in your hand. Your ruby soul quivered in the pit of your chest, a beacon through the dark. 

“kiddo,” Sans breathed.

You shambled forward and blindly slashed for his neck. He side-stepped the sloppy cut. Your blade lodged into the unseen ground, so deeply it took a few tries to pry it out. Like a marionette, you lolled about to face him.

“It’s all my fault,” you murmured. “All my fault.”

“that ain’t true,” said Sans. He grimaced and ducked another swing. “you’re a good kid. you’ve always been a good kid.”

“I'm sorry,” you mumbled.

“why?” he asked. “you saved us. you saved me. you gave up your resets for it!”

Your razor-edged swipes and stabs began to falter. “My fault . . .”

“the only thing you’re at fault for is trying too bleedin’ hard.”

Though shaking, you continued to jab and swing your dagger with reckless abandon, and he continued to evade its path with infuriating precision. Whipping air and shuffling feet echoed through the dark as if you fought in an empty chapel.

“c’mon, bud!” Sans panted. Sweat had begun to gather on his forehead. “it’s me, sans!”

“Sans?” you replied in a fog. “Sans is dead. I killed him. It’s my fault.”

“i’m not dead. i’m right here.” 

He came close, a breath away. Your knife grazed his cheekbone, revealing a stripe of red that trickled down into his shirt collar. As your arm passed his shoulder, he caught you around the chest and held on tight. He buried his face into your neck. 

“i’m right here.”

At this, you froze. You held your knife shakily over his head, prepared to strike down into his back—but you didn’t. Though the black, jagged strokes of paint shifting about your head did not cease, the red of your eyes had dimmed. 

“frisk. chara.” 

He cradled your hiding face between his hands and looked into your eyes a long, long time. You could feel him reaching through your soul, judging you, reading you from cover to cover like an unlocked diary.

“it’s not your fault.”

As the words sank in, tears sprinkled down from that stormcloud between you, raining over your shoes and his. That dreadful, bloody knife clattered to the ground, and soon you followed. You sat seiza at his feet and clung to his coat, your face no longer shrouded. You sobbed into his t-shirt, broken, yet overjoyed to see him alive. 

He hesitated, then slipped his fingers down into the deep brown thatches of your hair.

“You’re really here,” you said, looking up into his face. 

Sans crouched down to your level and shrugged. “think so.”

“Am I dead?”

“uh.” He scratched the back of his skull and winced. “ya ain’t in yer body, that much is for sure. hopin’ you might join me on the way back, though . . . if you’d do me the honor.”

You hugged him again, even more tightly than before. Conflicted by memories old and new, shame hooked onto your soul with claws sharper than the dagger at his feet. His hand in your hair was all that kept you solid.

“I’m sorry.” Your tears fell faster as you considered the road leading you here. “I made you fall into the rift . . .”

“that one’s on me,” Sans said. “i knew what i might find down there.”

Your face sombered. “Did you find . . . him?”

Newfound brightness ignited his eyesockets. “he’s . . . alive,” he said quietly. He could scarcely believe the words. “trapped between time and space. it’s just like i thought.”

You were never more relieved to be proven wrong. Still, questions encircled your head like stars. Where was his brother, now? If Sans had gone to that place, how had he returned? How had he survived the rift, and Flowey no less? Was he the one turning back the clock? That should have been impossible. 

As you extended a hand to smear the streak of red you had carved into his face, a terrifying thought occurred to you. 

“Determination,” you breathed. “Sans, you didn’t—!”

“no,” he said.

“Monsters don’t bleed,” you said firmly in an attempt to call out his bullshit.

“not full-blooded monsters, no,” he agreed.

Several moments passed in which you digested these words, and what they implied. 

His smile slowly fell into a grimace, a mix of regret and weary sadness. He sat down in the darkness across you. Here, the two of you were truly alone. He breathed in, breathed out. 

“skeletons are kinda hard to come by,” he began hesitantly, “if ya hadn’t noticed. we’re only born under certain circumstances . . . with . . . certain parents.”

He lifted his head to the darkness above as if he might see the sky. A piece of him drifted away into nostalgia on Noctis wings. Bittersweet was the only word you could surface for his expression now.

“hardly look nothing like dad,” he began with a half-hearted shrug. “he was like . . . a dragon made of blue stars, a constellation in a nebula. huge, bigger than asgore. gast clan always was, compared to the dreems. i see him in my magic, though, sometimes. his face in my blasters, even if just the skull.”

You couldn’t find words. Surely he didn’t mean what you thought.

“don’ hardly look like mom, neither,” he said with a partial smile, “but we got her bones. we got her structure. i got some of her determination.”

“You’re half human.”

“i’m all me, thanks,” Sans snipped. Talking about it seemed to crawl over his bones like a spider bake sale. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” you asked, genuinely hurt.

He paused and picked at the healing cut on his cheek. He rubbed the red fluid pensively between his thumb and forefingers. “everyone down here knows what it means to be a skeleton,” he said quietly. “i thought you knew too, at first. we all did. a lot of folks thought it was why you shacked up with us instead of tori.”

Your shoulders relaxed.

“by the time i realized it . . . honestly, i didn’t know how to tell ya, kid. it's a sensitive subject.” He drew his coat around himself more tightly. “we’re the only ones left, y’know; me and puppy-dog. and dings. when the war started, humans went for families like ours first. papyrus was a bean, dings was just the right age for it to hit him later, and i . . . i remember everything, as always.” 

Your guilt ascended all over again. 

“we were just kids," he went on, "but nothin’ scared those purist humans more than a fuckin’ mule.”

“i’m sorry,” you said.

“don’t be,” he murmured. “not your fault.”

“But it is,” you insisted. Your tears began rising again. "I’m human. I’m responsible. After everything humans have done—after everything I’ve done—I don’t deserve any of you. I don’t deserve to be here. You shouldn’t have saved me . . .”

Sans gently wiped your face with his sleeve. “lemme finish, kid,” he said quietly. He heaved a long, drawn-out sigh, as if releasing a toxin trapped inside his ribcage. “i got a reason to hate humans, sure. they drove us down here. they blocked us in. hell, even monsters gave us a hard time for that half of us. papyrus was so bent on catching a human just to prove what side he was on. thought people might like him more.”

You felt sick.

“but,” Sans said, forcing you to meet his eyes, “my human parent sacrificed everything to save us. she stayed behind so we could get away. so many of us are alive because of her. you wanna tell me that was wrong? you wanna tell me she was responsible for everything that happened to us, just for being human?”

Your tears continued to fall. 

“you can’t help where ya came from,” said Sans, “but you can choose where ya go. and boy have you gone to some good places.” 

“Like the dump,” you quipped with a faint smile.

“heh, yeah,” he said. “like the dump.” He hung an arm over your shoulder. “so maybe you’ve made some big mistakes . . . but your heart was never in the wrong place. you want to make up for it. you want to be good. that’s what really matters, right?”

You sniffled and nodded. You had said the same to Alphys. Were you really beneath your own advice?

He gathered you into his arms again. After a long time kneeling there, faces in shoulders, he helped you back to your feet. 

“gonna need you to step in from here on out,” said Sans. “the chances hyperdoofus listens to me are about a million to negative one.” He smirked. “think you can handle it?” 

You took his hand and squeezed. 

“Only if you stand there with me,” you said.

His heart swelled in his chest. “i can do that."

Holding onto one another tightly, you stepped out from the darkness into a rainbow of light.

Notes:

And thus we have arrived at my third and final head-cannon: skeletons are what happen when a monster loves a human. I think my nervousness about dropping that bomb contributed to the delay in a latent sense, haha. Sorry for that again.

The idea of skeleton monsters always puzzled me, because in most folklore and fantasy contexts they have a direct tie to humans. Undead, more specifically. But in the context of the Undertale universe, undead didn't sit right with me. Skeleton monsters that conveniently mimic human anatomy didn't either. Then I had this thought. It explained several things for me: the blood from Sans' cut in the no mercy run, the reason he's so powerful, that "fourth wall" breaking tendency he and Papyrus both share... I massaged things some for the narrative here, but yeah.

I had been building to this a little bit as a possible reveal, then considered sidestepping it, but then as I really hammered out my ending it became an essential fact. I added more scenes and details in earlier chapters to get a little more traction on it, hence why I recommended rereading. :) Either way, I hope you find it at least interesting.

Thank you again to everyone who held on until now. Only three chapters left!

Next Up! Chapter 15: Determination.