In which Snowdin is less fabulous than we remember, and Sans refuses to use a binder on principle.

Sans

This is a mistake. Why am I doing this? The whole thing is so crazy and messed-up I won't even know where to start. How do you explain something like this? I know Checkers isn't gonna laugh in my face or anything. But she could freak out. She could worry that I've lost my marbles. Or the whole thing could be too much to process.

Or she'll see the real me and go running for the hills. It's the only sane response, really. I'm sorta surprised she hasn't done it yet.

I should be nervous. I should be just about out of my goddamn mind with anxiety. But now that I've committed to this, all I feel is numb. There's a muffling blanket over my emotions, trying its damnedest to protect me from whatever feelings it thinks are too big for me to handle. I should probably be worried about that, too. But apparently worry has gone AWOL along with everything else.

I put this off for almost a week, unable to face the looming dread despite the fact that I set myself up for all this. I told myself so much had happened recently that I needed time, needed space, needed to be anywhere other than where I'm planning to go. But giving myself time isn't helping, and putting space between myself and the Underground doesn't keep the memories away. I've spent enough of my life stalling to know when it's useful and when it's a cry for help.

I don't think I'm ready for this.

Checkers puts her arms around my neck and holds on tight. "Ready?"

I try to inject a little joviality into my voice when I say, "yup." I don't think it comes out right. Checkers just manages to make that face that says she knows I'm lying before I pull her into nothingness.

It's dark and cold when we emerge from the void. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust, but I know what I'll be looking at: a corridor of trees, straight trunks lining a snowy path leading away into the darkness. Checkers clings to me as she gets her bearings.

"Snow?" She steps away from me, her sneakers crunching through a days-old snowfall. The only footprints in it belong to us. Hardly anyone comes out this far, and since there are even fewer folks around than there used to be, I guess I should have expected that. Still, the surrounding silence feels eerie, with the Underground all but abandoned these days. Checkers shivers and pulls her light coat tighter around herself. I picked it out of her closet for this trip, knowing she'd need something to keep her warm on this side of the Underground, something she could also take off and tie around her waist as the weather changes. Down here, seasons are places, not times, and if she's getting the full tour, she's gotta be ready for everything from winter to the blazing fires of hell. Or summer, I guess. If you're into that kinda thing.

"they don't call it snowdin for nothin'," I say, taking her arm and leading her into a stroll. "well," I amend, "the town ahead is called snowdin. this is just the woods outside it."

Checkers looks at me curiously. "Isn't Snowdin your last name?"

I shrug. "a lotta monsters don't have last names. but to get around on the surface, you need one. gotta have last names for paperwork, bank accounts, that sorta thing. some of us made one up, others identified ourselves by wherever we're from." The trees have begun to thin, and a moment later a bend in the path spills us out into a snowy field, dotted with pine trees and lit by the dim light of the phosphorescent crystals scattered along the ceiling and walls of the great cavern. The ambient whitish glow is a lot like moonlight, though it's brighter than moonlit nights on the Surface. Sort of a pale perpetual twilight. The change from forest to field is pretty sudden, and I glance at Checkers to gauge her reaction. She's smiling, eyes wide and sparkling.

"Wow, it's beautiful." She walks out into the open and turns back to me, grinning. "How are there trees down here, anyway? How do they live without sunlight? How does it snow down here? Why is there weather down here at all?" She thinks for a second and then asks, "So all this time, you could've been Sans Sational, but you just went with Snowdin? I don't know whether I'm disappointed in you or proud of you."

"heh." I wanna laugh for real, but someone's hit the mute button on my emotions, and I can't really hear what they're saying. Checkers gives me a concerned look. "the answer to most of your questions is 'magic,'" I explain, ambling past her. I'm still shooting for casual and still falling short. I can tell I'm not delivering the lines quite right by the way Checkers is looking at me, but with the walls pressing in on me and the ceiling looming over me and everything so, so much like it used to be, "almost-casual" is the best I can do. As I continue to lead the way toward town, I lean over and scoop up a handful of slightly squeaky snow. I'm not sure why I've done it yet. Anything to keep me in the present, I guess. The icy fluff bites at my fingers with frigid teeth. I absently form it into a snowball as I continue, "the weather here is pretty constant. we've usually got some snow at this end of the underground. if it's not snowy, it's frosty. if it's not frosty, it's icy."

"Is the whole Underground like this?" Checkers scoops up her own handful of fluffy whiteness and starts shaping it. After a second, she pulls her sleeves over her hands, making improvised mittens to protect her fingers from the cold.

"nope, it gets warmer the closer you get to the barrier. there's a big thermal power plant near the exit. we call it the core. 's where we get all our electricity. paps hates the heat there and loves the snow here, so we lived on this side."

"Papyrus hates something? Weird."

"weeeell, hate is a strong word, i guess, but he's not a fan of hotland. he was a lot happier here." I lob my snowball at Checkers. She tries to dodge and it ploofs against her arm instead of her chest. The little "eek!" she emits is too cute for words, and suddenly a spike of emotion pierces the emptiness I've been floating in. I think it's happiness. It's gone too quickly for me to know for sure.

"Avast, ye bilge-rat!" She chucks her own snowball at me. I slip out of its path and give her a cocky grin, and another shimmer of honest happiness breaks through. This one lasts a little longer, and before it's completely faded, she feeds it again by scooping up another handful of snow and grabbing me by the back of my jacket as I turn, belatedly, to run. "Dodge this!"

"augh! no no no no!" I writhe as she dumps the snow down the back of my collar. I most certainly do not say "eek!" as icy water trickles through my ribcage; I shout a manly war cry and no one can prove otherwise.

"Nice screech," Checkers laughs. Clearly, her hearing must be faulty.

"i'll show you a screech," I fire back, smirking, and before she can blink I'm behind her with a fresh batch of snow, which I'm forced to drop as she throws herself backwards into me, sending us both tumbling into a small snowdrift at the edge of a stand of fir trees. I gather another handful of icy powder, and as Checkers sits up, sputtering and brushing snow from her face, I plop it down onto her head.

Time freezes momentarily (get it?) as she stares at me incredulously. Then she smirks and shoves me in the chest hard enough that I flop backwards into the drift again. A chuckle escapes me as I stare up at the trees, contemplating the far-away crystals glowing above me, shining beyond the snow-covered firs that stretch towards the ceiling as if there was a sun up there to reach for. "i used to hang out here when i needed time to think," I murmur, barely aware that I'm speaking out loud. "the door i told you about, the one i used to talk to toriel through? 's that way, back through the woods." I cock my head at the path behind us, winding through the trees into darkness. "that door leads out of the place that used to be our capital city. we kinda migrated across the underground as the centuries passed, until the capital was on the other side, right by the barrier, and the place we'd originally settled was practically abandoned. in the end, the only folks who lived on the other side of that door were those who liked the dark and the quiet. and toriel."

"Toriel... lived there? Alone? I mean, without Asgore?"

"yeah, she left asgore 'cause... hang on, ice water's soaking into my clothes." I pick myself up and offer Checkers a hand, which she accepts. "well," I continue, leading the way across the field again. "asgore, he had these plans to break the barrier and free all us monsters from the underground, but he needed... he needed souls to do it." Checkers gives me a quizzical look, so I elaborate. "human souls, specifically. a couple thousand years ago, seven human mages set the barrier in place and trapped us under this mountain. if asgore could have collected seven human souls of his own, he could have undone the spell."

"That's..." Checkers looks like she might throw up. "Asgore did that? He doesn't seem..."

"homicidal?" Checkers nods, then looks guilty, as if thinking anything bad about Asgore might be wrong now that he's no longer among the living. "he got desperate," I excuse my old friend. Probably more than I should. "to tell you the truth, a monster only needs one human soul to cross the barrier."

"I thought you said seven?" It's more a question than a statement.

"seven souls to break it. only one to cross it. thing is, he could've taken his first soul, crossed the barrier, got six more from the other side where humans were all over the place, and broken the barrier right away. but he never could commit to the plan. just waited on this side for humans to fall through the ceiling or whatever weird sequence of events got them down here. then he waited in his palace for them to cross the whole freakin' underground instead of going to get them." I shrug helplessly. "you know what i think? i think if he was really that opposed to killing people, why'd he keep doing it?"

"He thought it was necessary, I guess." Checkers kicks at the snow in front of her, eyes downcast. "Do you ever wonder how many horrible things in the world are caused by people trying to do what they think is necessary?"

I nod morosely. "and how many horrible things could be avoided if they just realized that what's 'necessary' really isn't. but i'm one to talk." I huff out a bitter laugh.

"What do you mean?"

I hesitate. My feet stop moving. I scratch the back of my neck, trying to buy time as I fight to get the words past the sudden knot in my not-quite-a-throat. This will be the first of what are supposed to be a lot of admissions on my part... that is, if I can manage to find my voice. "i... have a..." I take a deep breath and start over. "i have a track record of... of doing things. bad things. when it might not be necessary. and not doing them when it is. i just, i never knew what..." Checkers's hand slips into my own. Her fingers are cold. I pull her closer and put my other hand over hers, trying to warm it up. My voice is almost a whisper as I admit, "we don't know what's necessary and what's not until it's too late."

"Heh." Checkers gives me a sad little laugh.

"what?"

"It just reminds me of something I heard once. That life is a lousy teacher because the lesson always comes after the test."

I find myself chuckling along with her, and the tightness inside me eases, just barely.

The walk to Snowdin used to be full of puzzles and traps, but it looks like everything's been either packed up or simply erased by the elements. Most of the puzzles were made of snow and ice, so it's possible that, without anyone to tend them, they've become part of the landscape. When we get to the first place a spike trap would've been, I wave Checkers back and poke around in the snow for a while before I'm satisfied there's no danger.

"What're you looking for?"

"traps."

She laughs. Then she sees I'm using my "I'm serious" smirk rather than my "gotcha" smirk, and her laughter dies down. "There are traps out here? What for?"

"well, there were traps out here." I stand, brushing snow off my knees. "to keep away humans, i guess. though mostly we were just entertaining ourselves. looks like they're gone now."

"Mm. Too bad. I'd've liked to see one." We grin at each other for a moment. Then she shivers.

"these fields are longer than i remember 'em being," I admit, a little sheepishly. I hold my arms open in invitation, and Checkers immediately snuggles into them, warming my soul as much as my body. Just a couple minutes ago, I admitted out loud that I've done as-yet-unspecified bad things, and still she didn't hesitate to curl herself against my chest. Like a child. Perfect trust.

Holy shit that's a scary thought. I'm the last person she should trust. I'm a pretty sketchy character, all things considered, and for a moment I ping-pong wildly between protective concern that Checkers would trust a dangerous, secretive liar like me so completely, and an unbearably weighty feeling of preemptive guilt because I can't be sure I won't hurt her one day. How do I make that not happen? Sometimes it seems like I break everything I touch. I don't know what I'd do if I ever broke her.

"That's probably because you were always 'porting instead of walking," she murmurs into my clavicle, a smile in her voice. Distracted as I am, I have to think for a moment before I can remember exactly what I said to prompt that response. Despite myself, amusement tugs at the corner of my mouth.

"how well you know me. wanna shorten the trip?"

"Yeaaaah," she says reluctantly. "We can always come back here to explore some more later. With thicker jackets."

* * * * *

I could've dropped us straight into the old house Paps and I used to live in, but I wanted Checkers to be able to see Snowdin in all its Christmasy glory.

Maybe this was a mistake.

It's abandoned.

I mean, it looks completely deserted. I can't even see any footprints in the snow. The lights are still on in most of the houses, but I can tell nobody's home.

"Whoa, look at this place!" Checkers has never seen Snowdin full of townsfolk and the emptiness of it doesn't seem strange to her. Or she was expecting it, because she knows the Underground is virtually uninhabited these days and she's never seen Snowdin any other way. Whatever the reason, she's obviously excited rather than creeped out as she jogs a few steps farther down the main street, toward the communal Christmas tree which, apparently, nobody bothered to un-decorate. Maybe someone's still here after all. Or maybe the last monster to leave just couldn't bear to dismantle it.

"welcome to fabulous snowdin, home of grillby's, the shop, the inn, and of course, the librarby." I jerk a thumb sideways at Snowdin's little one-room collection of books and its infamously misspelled sign. Checkers laughs delightedly and immediately starts trying to read the sign out loud. It's harder than you'd think.

"Librar...by. Liburby. Lie. Brayr. Bee. Sans, this is a library. It should know how to spell itself. LIBRARBY. How did this happen?" She's cracking up now, and her laughter is making it even harder for her to nail that pronunciation.

"well, you know how it is. in a town this small, everyone helps each other out. the librarian didn't paint the sign; some well-meaning neighbor did. and, you know, you don't wanna criticize something someone did for you outta the goodness of their heart."

"So the librarian was stuck with it out of an obligation of gratitude?"

"well, he might've repainted it in the night once or twice, but someone super-sneaky changed it back. once or twice."

Checkers gives me a flat look. "Super-sneaky, huh?"

"the sneakin'est." I take her hand and tug on it. "c'mon, we can warm up at my place."

* * * * *

Hmm. Forgot Paps an' I took most of the furniture with us when we left. The old cathode-ray tube TV is still here, mostly due to our unwillingness to haul the ridiculously-heavy thing away. A VCR and a bunch of VHS tapes keep the TV company, and the saggy old couch with the broken springs is still where we left it. No point bringing that literal pain in the ass to the Surface.

"It really is warm." Checkers wanders into the kitchen, exploring this new terrain. "I thought it would be, you know, cold and dark and abandoned." She starts poking her nose into cabinets. "Heh. Spaghetti."

"yeah, the core is pretty much self-sustaining, so heat and electricity are really easy to come by, which makes 'em cheap as a hooker's hand-me-downs."

"Ugh."

"no reason to be frugal with your electricity when you can pay the bill with the change you find in the couch cushions."

"Hooker's hand-me-downs, Sans? Did you have to?" She's looking down at her jeans as if she's imagining they once belonged to a prostitute and now they're all over her... legs. Maybe that phrase was a little over-the-top, even for me.

"it sounded catchy. and, i mean, it works. right?" I shrug, offering a somewhat apologetic grin. Checkers smiles wryly at me, and I infer I'm forgiven. "anyway, a lot of folks prob'ly left all their lights on an' stuff when they moved to the surface. habit, you know? the core's got some maintenance workers on staff at all times, but mostly they just build puzzle mazes and generally dick around. nothin' really to do unless something goes wrong. which it never does. wonder if any of 'em are still down here, or if the core's just running itself. kinda like it used to, but without the pretense."

Checkers laughs. Then a thoughtful expression smoothes her countenance. "Puzzle mazes?" She cocks an eyebrow at me, not sure if I was being serious when I mentioned them. We talked about traps earlier, but I guess she hasn't connected "traps" with "puzzles."

I give her a crooked grin. "puzzles were a big thing down here. gave us something to do."

"I guess I've always assumed Papyrus's love for puzzles and games was unique to him. So puzzles are kind of a cultural thing?"

"you could say that." I smirk at her. "you could also say we had too much time on our hands."

While Checkers wanders from room to room, checking in closets and opening doors, I kneel by the VCR.

"someone's been using my media center," I grouse dramatically, trying for an impersonation of Papa Bear from Goldilocks.

Checkers pokes her head out from the tiny cupboard under the stairs. "Really?"

I pick up one of the tapes, observing the wear and tear on it. There's way more than I remember. Are those bite marks? "yeah, they watched these 'die hard' movies to death. though i'm pretty sure john mcclane's everyone's hero, so..."

Checkers laughs. Then she points finger-guns at me, says, "Happy trails, Hans!" and ducks back into the cupboard.

"i think i just fell a little more in love with you."

"Shoot, right, Snowdin. Christmasy surroundings. I should have gone with, 'Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.'" Her voice is a little muffled in there. I can hear her rummaging around.

"so I guess we know what we're watching next movie night." I drop the tape and dust myself off as I stand up. "what're you doing in there?"

Checkers sticks her head out of the cupboard again and waves a severely water-damaged board game box at me. "Look, I found... I can't read it. Jumanji, probably."

"in that case, don't open it."

Checkers laughs and wanders off to explore upstairs. I follow her, feeling... lighter.

Of course, a full exploration of the little house only takes a few minutes, even with Checkers poking her nose into every nook and cranny. Nonetheless, she seems a lot happier here in my old home than I ever was.

"This place is great," she says finally, grinning. "I'll take it."

I chuckle, but there's a bitter edge to it. The truth is I never wanted to see this place again. Having Checkers around is helping a lot; her presence is a constant reminder that time continues to move forward, and her good humor is doing something profound to my memories, injecting light and life into them a little at a time, bringing to the surface the nearly-forgotten good times and allowing their presence to color the bad times with hints of happiness. But even though I'm as far from Panic-Attack-Land as I could be while standing in the Underground, I'm also hyper-aware that I brought Checkers down here to talk about a bunch of things I really don't want to talk about. I'm not even sure how to bring them up. Maybe I should just blurt everything out right here. No lead-in, no context, just get it outta the way and then have a quiet freak-out in the corner.

... Nope.

"You said you needed to get some things, right? Are they here?" Checkers asks, giving me the opening I need right when I'm least willing to take the opportunity it offers.

"oh... yeah." I pat my pockets for a moment. Forgot the key. I almost roll my eyes at myself. Seriously, the one thing I needed for this trip and I... Aah, I probably left it subconsciously on purpose. Oh well, guess we'll have to get through the door the old-fashioned way.

"forgot my workshop key." I hold my arms open for Checkers again, and she slips into them, wrapping her arms around my neck.

"Maybe subconsciously you just wanted another hug," she quips.

"maybe." I know that's not the reason, but it still makes me smile as I pull her into the void.

We pop back into the world in darkness, but I know exactly where we landed and I know where the light switch is. I flip it, and light fills the small space, revealing a dusty white-tiled floor, a broken hulk of machinery covered by a drop cloth, and the cleanest workbench I've ever owned. Forgot I used to put stuff away when I was done with it. Feels like a lifetime ago. And in a way, it was.

Checkers steps away from me. "This is your old workshop? Where's the mess?"

"mostly in my new workshop," I reply, pulling one of the bench's drawers open and extracting a sheaf of printouts. Checkers walks to the drop cloth and peeks under it, but of course she's not sure what she's looking at. As far as I know, that thing is the only one of its kind in existence. I drop my research notes carelessly on top of the blueprints gathering dust on the table.

"Okay, so, one more question?"

"just one?"

She laughs. "Nnooo... but I have to ask them one at a time or the answers get all mixed up."

Didn't know I'd be doing this much smiling down here. Real smiling, not the fake kind. It's sort of a relief, knowing the Underground doesn't have to be a big bag of misery all the time. "what's the question?"

"What's the thing under the cloth? It looks like some kind of vehicle."

"time machine." I drop the bomb so casually it's no wonder it doesn't go off.

Checkers gives me a flat look. "Time machine."

"yup."

"What is it really?"

"'s really a time machine."

There's a little flame of excitement starting to kindle in Checkers's eyes, but it's tempered by caution. She wants to believe me, she thinks I'm probably telling the truth, but everything she knows is screaming at her that...

"That kind of science is impossible." She strides back to the sheet and pulls it up so she can look at the thing again, as if it might have changed in the minute or so since she last saw it. "Physics wouldn't let you. It's impossible." She checks the machine once more.

I can't help but laugh at her expression, half-skeptical and half-blown-away. Her compulsive checking and re-checking under the cloth is pretty funny, too.

"turns out it's not impossible. just a really bad idea." The thought sobers me, and Checkers picks up on my mood, coming to lean against the table with me again. She watches me somberly as I elaborate. "too many trips in this thing... they caused a lot of problems. me an' my... boss, i guess. partner, maybe? well, whatever i was to him, it's not important. we should've seen the warning signs, should've taken the time to figure out why certain things were happening and what they meant, but... well, you know how it is. curiosity and cats and all that jazz."

Checkers watches me silently, waiting for me to say more. I fiddle with the zipper on my jacket as I try to figure out what to say, what she needs to know and what would just be window dressing. While I'm still searching for a starting point, Checkers tilts her head toward the sheaf of printouts I'd dropped on the table. "So what are those? Research notes? Data?"

"hm." I think for a second or two. "prob'ly best if I explain a little more first. don't wanna get ahead of myself."

She turns to face me directly, leaning sideways against the workbench, one elbow casually propping her up. "Okay, shoot."

"alright. so, where was i? time travel and consequences. right. well, give a couple of reckless science nerds a time machine and they won't be able to keep their hands off it. we spent almost every day bouncing around, experimenting, messing with things. didn't realize we were damaging the timestream. surprising how many paradoxes you can create without anything drastic happening. at least not right away. there are some things down here... you wouldn't have seen 'em yet, they're glowing points of light scattered here and there around the underground. they look like little stars, just hanging in the air. whenever we did something paradox-y, one of those things popped up in the area. we didn't know what they were, couldn't interact with 'em. they didn't seem to do anything. we thought they were, i dunno, light that got sucked into the mini black holes we were creating and got somehow mashed together and pinned into the fabric of the world."

"You were making black holes?" Checkers whisper-shouts at me.

"yeaaah, stupid, huh?" I scratch my neck again. Never really thought about it 'til now, but it's almost a nervous tic at this point, a sort of embarrassed fidgeting gesture I'm subconsciously using to buy myself some time while I avoid looking at her. "'s the only way to cross the timestream. they were controlled, you know? not a threat by themselves. and you have to pass through one to travel in time, so we kept doing it." I pick at a damaged spot on the workbench, working a sliver of wood loose, still avoiding Checkers's eyes. "so one day, we decided we wanted to see if we could go back and sabotage the time machine early in its development, so we wouldn't have been able to finish it. still studying paradoxes' effects in the framework of time, you know? and it broke."

"The machine in the past broke, or the one you were driving?"

"well, both, but when i said 'it broke,' i meant time."

There's a long silence while Checkers stares at me. I finally raise my eyes to meet hers. Her voice shakes a little when she says, "Time... broke?"

"shattered. ka-ping." I fling my fingers wide in a gesture that indicates the fracturing of something fragile. "took my partner with it. or boss. whatever. and all those paradoxes we'd set up, thinking they had no consequences, they became separate timelines. well, not individual timelines, exactly. they were more like... shatter points? places where the timeline was broken and divergence was possible. at first, these shatter points just led to the separate futures each paradox created. after that, i struggled to remember some of the time travel stuff we'd done, 'cause technically some of it hadn't even happened to me."

"Sans, that's..." Checkers is thinking so hard her eyes are screwed shut. "That's... messed up."

I huff out a small laugh. "totally messed up. in lots of ways."

"I'm sorry about your partner." The sympathy in her voice, on her face, takes me by surprise. Don't know why it should. Maybe I'm so far removed from that part of the story myself that I've halfway forgotten the original grief and fear and guilt. Was that a traumatic experience? I've been looking at it comparatively for so long that I'm not sure anymore. But... that shock of sudden disaster, the realization that I might die, that we might've just caused the end of the world... the loss of someone who, if not exactly a friend, was at least a mentor... the understanding that this was all our fault, my fault... Yeah, I admit to myself, maybe it all still hurts. A little.

I shrug. "it was a long time ago. a lotta people nowadays think gaster fell into the core... did i tell you he made that, too? no? ...but when this all happened, when people first started saying 'he fell into his own creation,' the creation they meant was the tangled mess of time-knots we'd made by being... well, being idiots." Weird; this isn't the bad stuff. I thought I was over all this. But apparently the guilt from all those ancient mistakes was just waiting patiently underneath every other messed-up thing I've ever done, waiting to twist the knife I barely remembered was there. If I hadn't been so blinded by curiosity and ambition and pride, maybe I'd have paid more attention to all the warning signs. Maybe I wouldn't have been so reckless. Maybe I'd have been the voice of reason, and Gaster would still be alive. Or at least in one piece.

Checkers's hand slips into mine. She twines our fingers together and holds on tight, and the pressure grounds me, helps me get my thoughts back on track. I have to pause for a deep breath before I continue.

"so after we broke time, asgore had to get himself a new royal scientist, and while he was making up his mind, i studied the timelines that had been created. eventually asgore settled on alphys and she and i worked on a lot of projects together, but asgore was really set on figuring out how to break the barrier by then, so all the official experiments focused on that. the time stuff i did on my own, mostly. tried to involve alph a couple of times, got her opinions on some things here and there, but since she'd helped us with the construction of the time machine, she'd known gaster, too, and she didn't want anything to do with our time shenanigans after they'd gotten him killed. or whatever it was that happened to him."

"Why didn't Asgore pick you?"

"huh?" It takes me a second to pull my mind back to the present.

"For Royal Scientist. Why did Asgore pick Alphys and not you?"

I snort in amusement. "i didn't want it. too much paperwork, not enough freedom. besides, a fuck-up that bad can ruin a researcher's career. i was lucky i didn't get fired."

"I bet he asked you anyway." She's smiling a little, watching me. I give her a grin.

"you bet right. he always was a softhearted old goat." I've barely started the story, and already I'm strung tight as a bowstring. I take a moment to master myself, try to force myself to relax. "okay, so... i developed ways of tracking these alternate timelines. i studied 'em almost obsessively. i mean, me an' gaster had created an entirely new universal paradigm. there was so much to learn, so much it could teach us all about time and space and... well, anyway. after years of studying these timelines, i noticed this... anomaly." Checkers looks at me quizzically. "i couldn't, like, look into the timelines or anything, but i could track 'em. and from what i could see, all of a sudden, some of 'em were stopping, just disappearing completely. and others were popping up outta thin air. it all seemed to happen at once. i hadn't done anything to trigger it. i was just watchin' it happen. to tell the truth, i was a little scared that time wasn't done fracturing yet and something awful was headed our way. like, what if the whole spacetime continuum went up in flames or something? i showed the readings to alphys, and she weighed in on 'em a little, but like i said, after time went ka-ping, she didn't want anythin' to do with that sorta research." I sigh, and my hand twitches toward my neck again. Now that I'm aware of how often I do that neck-scratching thing, I'm determined to break the habit. I shove the hand back into my pocket.

"i didn't realize it at first, but looking back, i know i must've been involved in a lot of those timelines. my memories of alternate... i dunno, alternate pasts? worlds?... were really scrambled and fuzzy. what i could remember was full of blank spaces, where memories just... weren't. the older memories are still like that. all the early stuff, it's... basically inaccessible." I tap my temple with a finger. Don't wanna go into how hard I've tried to remember these things. Eventually I just had admit defeat and get on with my life... if you could call it that. "things coulda gone on like this indefinitely. damn, that's a scary thought." Checkers squeezes my hand again. I look into her eyes for a moment. Her gaze is full of sympathy, and I don't know how to deal with that, but I still need it right now. The conflicting fear of vulnerability and need for support give rise to... something. Some sort of confused-as-hell emotion that feels like an impending hiccup. I must've made a noise, or an expression, or something, 'cause Checkers cocks a curious eyebrow at me. I clear my throat. Back to business.

"so, keep in mind that when the timelines shifted, i went with 'em. we all did. everyone in the underground. maybe even the whole world. i dunno how far the reach of this thing extended. anyway, technically speaking, whenever spacetime jumped backwards, i was sent back to a state where the things i'd seen and done never happened. i don't like to think about how often i might've figured out the timelines were jumping around, just to forget it when things reset. but every time, i must've obsessed over what was happening, fought like crazy to remember, tried every trick i could think of to keep my other lives in my mind... honestly i don't know how it happened. maybe i finally tried something that worked, but my gut feeling is that, in all likelihood, it was just a learning curve. i started remembering more and more about each timeline, prob'ly just 'cause i was the only one in the underground who was constantly trying to do it. practice makes perfect, maybe? i dunno."

I heave a deep sigh. If I'd never picked up that skill, I might be a lot happier now. More hopeful. Less screwed-up. Killing Gaster and breaking time would be the worst memories I had.

But... the thought of going through it all totally blind, of not having these memories... that's even more terrifying. At the time, I thought I was totally helpless, a drowning man being swept downriver by a current too strong to fight. But to not even know you're in the water? That's real helplessness.

I sneak a peek at Checkers. She's gaping at me in astonishment. Must've been the "I remember things that never happened" part of the story. I'd be astonished myself, if the shine hadn't worn off long, long, long ago. "you'll catch a fly if you don't close your mouth," I say dryly. She snaps her jaw shut and gives me an embarrassed smile.

"Sorry. I just... it's a lot to take in."

"hard to believe?"

She scuffs the toe of her shoe against the tiles. "A little." My soul plummets from my ribcage down into my sneakers. I try to hide my reaction, but she must've seen something in my expression, 'cause she hurriedly follows up with, "I do believe you! I really do! I'm just... trying to process it."

I'm not sure when I started gripping the front of my jacket, but I ease my fingers away from the fabric and take a breath. "it's okay if it's... i mean, i might be crazy, too. that's a possibility. you can ask alph about the timelines, she knows about those, but the rest is... it was just me. maybe it never happened an' i just think it did."

Checkers grips my shoulders and bodily turns me to face her. "Sans." She says it like a command, forcing me to look her in the eye. "You are the most rational person I know. If there was any indication that what you remember wasn't real, you'd have noticed it."

"heh..." Suddenly desperate to hide, I put a hand over my face. "heh heh..." Not sure why this weird little laugh is coming outta me. Maybe I just don't know what else to do. Shit, better say something, or she'll change her mind about me being insane. "well," I manage to choke out, "if you see something i missed, tell me. if all this never happened, it'd be nice to know it."

Checkers's arms are around me suddenly, pulling me into her. It takes me a couple of seconds to relax in her embrace, but she holds on patiently while I acclimatize. When my hands finally leave my pockets and I wrap my arms around her back, she lets out a satisfied sigh and presses closer to me. Her lips are right by my earhole, so she keeps her voice low when she speaks. "I don't know what you're working up to, but it seems like it's going to be tough to talk about."

"...maybe," I mumble into the crook of her neck, where I've buried my face.

"I want to be here for you," she says simply. "Will you let me be here for you?" The raw honesty of it breaks my heart.

"i..." The words catch in my throat and I try again. "i don't think i know how to do that."

I can feel the disappointment in her posture as she droops against me. It only lasts a moment; then she pulls herself together. "Well, now's a good time to practice." She's smiling again. I can hear it in her voice. God, I'd do anything to protect that smile.

I breathe out an "okay," and draw away from her. Tilting my head toward the workbench, I offer, "have a seat?"

She grins, a little sadly and a little hopefully, and hefts herself up to sit on the table, swinging her legs. I'm strongly reminded of the last time we were alone in a basement workshop together, and I have to tell my soul to chill out as I take a seat beside her. I mentally fumble around for a minute, trying to find the lost threads of my story.

"so, the timelines i've been watching are jumping all over the place, right? and i'm remembering each successive reset more clearly than the last one." I hesitate. I don't technically have to share the personal stuff with Checkers. It would be safer to stick to the story and leave my feelings out of it. Safer and easier.

And more cowardly.

She wants to be here for me. And something in me really wants to let her do that. I'm so tired. I'm tired of hiding, tired of being alone, of standing apart from everyone else. I'm tired of pretending I'm okay for the sake of the people I care about, keeping them safe from my world so they can live the kind of lives I can't touch. I'm tired of carrying all this by myself. I don't know if this is the right way to... to lower my barriers, or whatever. I honestly have no idea what that would even feel like. But maybe I can power through by just forcing myself to talk about... stuff.

By stuff, I mean feelings.

"so, at some point, my perspective... shifted. like, everything snapped into place and after that i just started experiencing all the successive timelines as one reeeeally long-ass timeline. i started using the word 'reset' 'cause after a while, the whole thing began to feel like a video game, you know? time would seem like it was going forward and then it would just snap me back to wherever i'd been earlier. like reloading at a save point. it was... disturbing." I realize I'm trembling a little. Why is this part, in particular, so nerve-wracking? I almost choked on the word "disturbing." Recounting painful memories? No prob, Bob. Saying out loud that they're painful? Now that's hard. C'mon, Sans, get it together. You wanna trust her, right? Then don't just trust her with the truth. Trust her with yourself.

I take a shaky breath and continue doggedly. "it was disturbing 'cause, with time always bouncing back like that, nothing really mattered. no matter what i did, what anyone did, it could all be erased just like that." I snap my fingers. "like it was nothing. we were all toys in the hand of something so powerful we couldn't even decide our own fates, you know? trapped in a prison where the walls are hours and minutes and seconds, and it just felt..." My voice is shaking. I grit my teeth and try to stabilize myself, with only limited success. "it felt like the cell was getting smaller and smaller. after a while, i c-couldn't breathe anymore."

Checkers gets to her knees on the workbench and reaches out to hold me. There's a hesitancy to the action, as if she's not sure whether a hug is something I'll want right now. At first, I'm not sure either, but I lean against her chest and let myself relax into her warmth. Weirdly, though I start feeling better, the shaking gets worse. "w-we were all trapped an'... an' nobody else even knew it. i was... i was the only one. couldn't talk about it to anybody. they'd think i was crazy. had to g-go it alone." Checkers is rocking me a little, rubbing my back in small, comforting circles. It's helping. I heave a sigh and sink into her embrace a bit more. I feel a little stronger, a little calmer, a little less afraid. "after a while," I continue, "living the same few days over and over became... aah, shit, i'm not sure i can describe the sorta things that does to someone. i dunno. maybe somebody else would've handled it better. i just... i couldn't cope. i couldn't." Checkers murmurs something against my neck, tightening her hold. I don't know what she's saying, but her tone is full of love and reassurance. I finally lift my arms and return the embrace. My shaking is dying away and my voice is stronger than it was. Her presence, her touch, it's... it's so warm, and soothing. It takes the edge off the pain. I don't know if this counts as "letting her be there for me," but at least it's a start. Right?

After a few long moments of silence, I draw gently away from Checkers. There's more to tell, and after all this embarrassing vulnerability, I'll be damned if I don't finish. "well. anyway. turns out i'd've been more on top of things if i'd left the lab once in a while. as it was, by the time i figured out it was a person doing this, i was already halfway to being a basket case."

"A person?" Checkers sounds almost as shocked as I'd been when I finally put two and two together. Her mouth works for a couple of seconds, as if she wants to speak but can't force the words out, before she manages, "How?"

"that was the question, wasn't it?" I slide off the workbench and turn back to it, spreading out the papers I'd come here to look at. Checkers follows me to the floor to make room for them. "you were right about this stuff here. it's data on the timelines. i wanted to see if i could maybe spot the reason why frisk didn't reset when her father was killed."

Checkers chokes on nothing. "Okay," she splutters, coughing. "You've gotta be kidding me."

"nope."

"Frisk. Teenager. Monster ambassador. Broke the..." Checkers trails off and goes quiet for one pensive moment. "Broke the barrier. You know, I never heard exactly how she did that, either. She's... she's kind of a mystery, isn't she?"

"you've got no idea." I bend over the printouts, skimming them. Checkers looks over my shoulder curiously, but it's all just raw data with no clear context, so of course she can't make sense of it. Half my notes, the interpretation half, I mostly kept in my head. Bad research practice, I know, but what can I say? By the time I'd made this particular set of notes, I'd become so godawful at life in general that any day I got out of bed could be considered a good day. The data on the page fits seamlessly together with what I've got memorized, even though it's been a couple of years since I've seen it. Like I never left.

I only notice I'm struggling to breathe when something touches my arm. I startle and smack the hand away before I even realize whose it is. Of course guilt hits me like a ten-ton truck when it registers that I'm looking at Checkers. She's cradling her fingers against her chest and fighting to hide a hurt expression.

"shit." I scrub at my face with a sleeve, trying to pull myself together. "sorry. you okay?"

"I'm fine," she says. Then she asks, "Can I touch you?" Like she needs my permission now.

"shit, checkers, i... i didn't mean to..."

"I know. I just... do you need some space, or..."

"no... yeah, you can touch me. i won't... it's okay now." I'm stumbling over my words, unable to express how sorry I am in any way that matters.

Checkers takes my hand and interlaces her fingers with mine. I give her hand a little squeeze, and she smiles gently and presses herself against me. She doesn't hug me, just holds herself there and waits for me to hug her. For a second I consider moving away from her instead; she doesn't know the whole story yet. Until now I've somehow avoided thinking about this, but all at once the thought rears up inside my head like a rampant elephant and squashes the breath right outta me: if I tell her everything I've done, Checkers might change her mind about... about us. Maybe I should create some distance now. It could soften the blow later.

And is that your decision to make? a little voice that sounds an awful lot like Checkers whispers in my head. Before I can consciously answer, my arms are around her. I hold her tightly, almost desperately, as if I could extend this moment indefinitely as long as I don't let her go.

This could be the last time she lets me hug her. Maybe I shouldn't be doing it.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've made the wrong choice. Checkers's words about learning from life echo in my mind. ...The lesson always comes after the test. Any choice I make could be the wrong one. Indirectly, that would mean it takes an incredible amount of courage just to live. Huh. Don't think I've ever appreciated that fact before. I press my forehead to Checkers's shoulder, but I also loosen my grip on her. "did i hurt you?" I ask finally, pulling gently away.

"No, it wasn't a hit, really. More like a brush-off." She hesitates and then adds, "My feelings were hurt a little. But you didn't mean it."

"i am... so sorry." I stare helplessly at her. There's really no other way to say it, but it seems so inadequate.

"Don't worry about it. I won't." She grins at me, and it looks just as cheerful as any smile she ever gave me. "I'll add it to my 'Sans interactions' repertoire."

I laugh. It's a weak laugh, but it's there, and it's real.

"Wanna take a break from the serious stuff and go outside for a while? I'd like to see more of the Underground."

I think about it for a minute. "maybe." I know I'll have to tell the rest of the story eventually, but Checkers is right: I need a break. I roll up the data printouts and stuff them into a little satchel I kept down here just for that purpose. Wow, haven't used this thing in ages. A briefcase would probably have been better, but I've always found wrinkly pages were just as readable as flat tidy pages, and you can't sling a briefcase over your shoulder. Don't talk to me about binders. I'm a wild man. Live free or die.

"i promised you a tour, and we've barely started." I reach for Checkers and draw her close. "let's blow this pop stand." She clings to me tightly as I pull her into the void. I cling just as tightly to her.

~ Author's Note ~

Timeline for the time shenanigans (because I got confused writing it, which means it's probably also confusing to read):

Sans and Gaster fracture time, creating weak spots in the fabric of spacetime where the branching points of alternate timelines can be preserved: save points.

Sans researches the alternate timelines in existence after the temporal accident. During this time, Alphys is working on the research that will eventually produce Flowey.

Flowey discovers he can save and load. He and Sans subsequently share many of the same interactions and struggles that Frisk and Sans do. All this happened before Sans was able to remember the resets with any sort of clarity, which means that, even now, he barely remembers Flowey and is currently unaware of the flower's role in any resets, at least consciously.

Frisk falls into the Underground. In consequence, Flowey loses the ability to save and load.

Sans's memories of resets become clearer from here on, though any alternate memories formed before this point are still indecipherable. Among other things, this means he currently thinks Frisk is the only "anomaly" he's encountered.