Sans' Perspective

I stare straight ahead as the kid's sister and I walk out towards the ruins. I'd suggested it so we could get away from Paps and the kid... but I'm beginning to regret it now. Beyond the crunching of the snow beneath our feet, it's unnervingly silent. The girl hasn't said anything since we left, and it's starting to get to me.

Welp, this is awkward.

I sneak a look at her, and can't help but cringe when I find that she looks absolutely miserable. The poor girl must be freezing—she's trembling ever so slightly, and her arms are wrapped around herself to try and conserve whatever little body heat she has left.

Feeling the weight of my stare, she starts to turn to look at me. I quickly face forwards again, unwilling to meet her eye. ...I'm not sure why, though. I'm the one that asked her to walk with me. Why is it so hard to start up a conversation?

In the absence of anything to say, I slowly slip off my jacket. There's a good chance we'll be out here for a while, and I'm not just going to let her freeze to death. I try to meet her eye when I hold my jacket out to her, but I just can't seem to manage it.

"Oh! U-uh... you don't h-have to..." she says, teeth chattering. I try to come up with a pun or something to lighten the mood, but for the first time in a long time, nothing comes to mind.

"Just take it," I mutter, looking away. "I'm a skeleton. I don't get cold."

After a slight hesitation, she takes it.

"Th-thanks," she murmurs.

"Heh. No problem," I say, making a momentous effort to look her in the eye. "What would the kid say if we went back and you were... frozen..."

My mind goes completely blank, and I find myself staring at her. Seeing her wearing my jacket like that, it's... it's so... After a few moments, some unfamiliar feeling drives me to look away. Embarrassment, maybe?

Definitely embarrassment, I assure myself.

"Sans?" she asks. A shiver runs down my spine when she says my name, and I can feel my cheekbones warm slightly.

"Sans... are you blushing?"

"W-what?" I stammer, caught completely off-guard by the question.

"Your cheekbones are turning blue."

"No they're not!"

"Huh," she says suspiciously.

"It's just cold out. That's all," I say indignantly.

"Hmm..." she says thoughtfully, a mischievous smile making its way onto her face. "I thought you said skeletons don't get cold?"

I walked into that one. Wait... this is perfect.

"They don't," I say, jumping on the opportunity. "They get chilled to the bone."

The girl stares at me for a moment. She tries to hold it back, but she eventually starts laughing. And, just like that, the tension that'd been in the air for the last few minutes completely fades away.

Heh, still got it.

"Wow," she gasps, "that was really bad."

"I still gotta laugh out of it, though," I say, winking at her. We fall back into silence, but this time, it's more of a friendly silence.

"So..." I say eventually. "You're the kid's sister."

"Yep," she says. "You seemed surprised when you found out."

"Well," I say, "I was. It's the first time you've fallen down here, so I wasn't expecting it."

"...Of course it was the first time," she says, shooting me a confused look. "It's not possible to fall more than once, is it?"

Oh, crap.

I hadn't meant to bring that up. My decision to leave the house was made in the heat of the moment, and now that I'm out here, I'm not sure I want to tell anyone about the timelines. Especially not her. If I want her to fully understand, I'd have to tell her everything—and there's no easy way to tell someone that their sister can reset time, or that she sometimes gets possessed by a psychopath and unwillingly murders the entire monster race.

And... I'd have to tell her that I've killed her sister.

That's the kicker. I've watched Paps get killed over and over again. I know how much it hurts to lose a sibling. And if (Y/N) is really here to stay... do I really want her to see a murderer every time she looks at me?

"Sans?" she asks. "Are you okay?"

I hadn't even noticed that I'd stopped walking. (Y/N) is several feet in front of me, and looking back at me with visible concern. I'm about to say that I'm fine, but the words seem unwilling to form themselves.

I... I don't know how much longer I can go on like this.

I sigh and sit on a nearby boulder, placing my skull in my hands. Everything I've seen, everything I... I've done... it's making me come apart at the seams.

I can't go on pretending that everything's okay. I just... I just can't.

Snow crunches as (Y/N) walks over, but I don't look up as she finds herself a place on an adjacent rock.

"You know," she says, "I've got a pair of perfectly good ears, if you need to borrow them."

Was that... a skeleton pun? I ask myself, looking up at her suspiciously.

"Sorry," she says, trying to fight back a smile at my expression. "I couldn't help it."

"But seriously," she says gently, her (e/c) eyes becoming more serious as she meets my gaze. "No matter what it is that's bothering you, you can talk to me about it."

As I look into her eyes, I can feel my inner turmoil slowly starting to fade away. This person, with her melodic voice, soft smile, and her appreciate of bad puns, exudes trustworthiness. If I'm going to tell anyone... then, then I guess... it might as well be her.

Welp, this is it. I'm about to make the most impulsive decision of my life.

"I don't think you'll like what I have to tell you, (Y/N)," I sigh, breaking eye contact. "You may not even believe me."

"Honestly, after surviving a fall down the side of a mountain, finding out that monsters and magic exist, and meeting a pair of living skeletons, there's not much I wouldn't believe," she says bluntly. "And I'd rather have you say something I don't like than have you do something you'd regret."

"And you won't tell anyone? Especially not Papyrus and Frisk?" I ask. She seems more hesitant about that request.

"I... I won't tell anyone."

"Good," I say. I look her straight in the eye, trying to communicate just how serious I am on this point. "'Cause if you do... you're going to have a bad time."

I must've made "the face," because (Y/N) is staring at me with a mixture of uncertainty and fear, and she's actually leaning backwards a little bit to put some extra distance between us.

"Wow, Sans... you can be really scary when you want to," she mutters, looking away.

Oops. I hadn't meant to do that. Well... okay, maybe I wanted to look a little menacing, but not enough to actually scare her.

"Sorry," I say, my hand automatically finding its way to the back of my skull. "I didn't mean to scare you, it's just hard to emote without any lips... or eyebrows."

"I-It's fine," she says, taking a shaky breath. "I get it."

I sigh and turn to look out across the snow, trying to figure out how best to start.

***

Your Perspective

Sans' white pinpricks are unfocused as he stares out over the snow, as if he's looking at something only he can see. After such an ominous introduction to his story, followed by that empty eye-socketed stare, you can't help but feel uneasy about what it is he's going to tell you. You draw his jacket closer around you, trying to fend off the sudden chill that's entered the air.

"...What do you know about timelines?" Sans asks.

"Timelines?" you echo uncertainly. "Well... not much—just what I've seen on documentaries and stuff. It's a quantum mechanics theory, right?"

Sans nods and gives you a kind of 'go on' gesture. You have no idea where this is going, but you continue anyway.

"It basically states that time is a web of alternate universes. For every decision we make, there is an entirely separate set of consequences, which will ultimately lead to very different scenarios later on," you explain. "So therefore, every decision we make, and every possible alternate to that same decision, has its own set of events associated with it—its own timeline. And, theoretically, there's unlimited number of alternate timelines."

"Right," Sans says, looking at you approvingly. "There's just one thing that you didn't get quite right—it's not just a theory."

"...What are you trying to say, Sans?"

"The story that I've got to tell is long, complicated, and completely crazy," he says, looking at you from the corner of his eye. "And it'd probably go a lot faster if you don't ask questions until the end. Are you okay with that?"

"...I guess," you say uncertainly. Sans takes a deep, shaky breath, and stares out at the distant horizon.

"Ok then," he sighs. "It all started when Frisk first fell down here. And yes, I do mean first, but I'll get to that in a sec."

"The first run was great. The kid was a little charmer—made friends with every monster she met, even if they were trying to kill her. Paps and her got off great. She flew threw his puzzles with flying colors, and she even managed to convince him not to bring her to Undyne. It was great to see my brother happy like that again. But then she got to waterfall, and, well... she died."

"She what?!" you screech, jumping up. "What? When?! How—"

"Hold on," Sans sighs, placing a hand on your shoulder. "She was dead then, but she's not now—I'll explain in a second."

Frisk isn't dead. You just saw her half an hour ago.

"Ok..." you mutter to yourself. "I'm going to be calm, and I'm going to listen to what the seemingly crazy skeleton has to say. I'm not going to jump to any conclusions, and I'm going to try to be understanding."

You take a deep breath to try and quiet your racing heart, and sit back down on your rock.

"You done talking to yourself, Buttercup?" Sans asks mischievously. A thrill runs through you at the nickname, but you elect to ignore it. You nod instead, telling him to go on.

"Okay. Back to my story—the kid died. We'd all lost a great friend. It was sad, tragic, etcetera... but it only lasted about twenty seconds. Before I knew what was happening, I found myself back at home, in my bed, with no memory of how I got there. The last thing I remembered was keepin' an eye on the kid in waterfall," Sans continues. "Not knowing what was going on, I asked Pap if he was going to be okay without the kid there. I figured the kid's death would be hard on him—he was the closest to her, and it was the first time he'd ever lost someone."

Sans takes a deep breath.

"'Kid?' he asked me. 'What kid do you mean, brother?' I tried to explain it to him, but he thought I was playing some kind of prank on him. According to him, he'd never seen a human before in his life. And then... he told me we were late for sentry duty, and that we needed to get back to our posts. That didn't make sense—we'd abandoned our posts after Paps made friends with the kid. But, not knowing what else to do, I had to go along with it."

"As the day progressed, I eventually wrote the whole thing off. The kid had never died. The kid had never even fallen in the first place—it was all just some kind of bizarre dream. But then, a few hours after taking my post, there she was. The kid was walking out of the ruins, just like she had the first time. I was relieved to see that she wasn't dead, and went to greet her. When I did, though... she didn't recognize me."

"She went through the Underground as if it were the first time. Nobody recognized her. Nobody remembered anything. For some reason, I was the only one that knew about the previous timeline. It was difficult, but I embraced it. I liked the kid, and it would've been hard on everyone if she really had died. It didn't matter that I was the only one that remembered, so long as everyone was happy."

"But then, the kid died again. And the world reset itself, again. And then it happened again... and again... and again... you get the picture. The first few times it happened, it was just because the kid died. But then, one time, she made it. She made it all the way through, all the way to Asgore. She defeated Flowey, and reclaimed the six souls. I thought that was it. She'd finally reached the end of her little 'quest,' so things would go back to some kind of normalcy. But then... the world reset."

"I didn't understand why. She hadn't died. I knew that for sure—I'd been following her, to try and prevent that from happening. Not knowing what else to think, I dismissed it as an accident. But then it started to happen more often, and for no real reason. The kid would do something she hadn't meant to, and the world would suddenly reset. She would get lost, and the world would reset. Though it always happened for different reasons, there was one thing that remained constant—it always had something to do with the kid. It was then that I started to realize that it wasn't just her deaths that caused it. She could force it to happen, through sheer force of will."

"I started to get tired of it. Sure, it was interesting to see how the kid's decisions affected the course of the timeline... but there's only so many times a guy can live through the same two days over and over again. I eventually decided that if the world reset again, I was going to tell Frisk what was going on—explain that she had the power to reset, and tell her that she should try her best to keep from using it. When the next reset happened, I went back to my station, this time determined to change the timeline for the better..."

Sans trails off, and his smile tightens at the corners. You start to become a little anxious as his white-pinprick pupils slowly fade away, leaving behind ominously empty eye sockets. He puts a hand to his forehead, and his shoulders start to shake as he... chuckles. It's a grating, bitter sound... and it chills right down to your very soul.

"Sans?" you ask, worried. "Sans, are you okay?"

"Can you believe that?" he asks. "I actually thought I could make a difference."

"Didn't you?" you ask softly, spurring him to finish his explanation.

"I never had the chance to find out," he mutters, pupils slowly returning. "If... if I had only told her sooner, then maybe..."

Gently glowing, bright blue tears materialize at the corners of the skeleton's eye sockets. He doesn't move to wipe them away, and he doesn't seem embarrassed about the fact that he's crying in front of you. In fact, it's almost as if he's completely forgotten that you're there at all.

"The... the next time Frisk left the ruins, there was something... something off about her," Sans says shakily. "She was colder, more removed. She didn't laugh at my puns. She didn't let me try and help her, like she had every time before. She wouldn't even smile anymore. It was as if... as if she were broken inside."

"I kept an extra close eye on her that run—I wanted to find out why she was acting so differently. It didn't take long for me to find out. Just minutes after she met me and Papyrus, she... she killed someone. I... I didn't know how to react. I mean, Frisk had never so much as hurt a monster before. Seeing her murder a monster in cold blood, seeing that demented smile on her face... something was very, very wrong."

"After seeing the kid kill every monster that crossed her path, and then watching as she actually sought out monsters to murder... I didn't know what to believe anymore. I went ahead to Snowdin, and managed to convince everyone to evacuate. I only left the kid alone for a few minutes—a half hour, at the most. But... but when I found her again, she... she was..."

Sans falls silent, his luminous blue tears slowly rolling down his cheekbones. His sadness is rubbing off on you. Your own eyes start to tear up, and you have to blink rapidly to keep them from falling. You're not sure you want to know happen next, but you don't try to stop him as he continues.

"...she was standing over Papyrus's disintegrating body."

You feel as if you'd just been shot. Your sister... your sister killed Papyrus?

No. No, that can't... she couldn't...

Sans, as if coming out of a trance, sniffs and quickly wipes away his tears with the neck of his T-shirt. When he continues, he seems to be a little more emotionally stable.

"The kid went on as if nothing happened. She killed everyone she came across, no matter what their intentions were. I had to stop her. I didn't know for sure what would happen if she reached Asgore, but I knew that it wouldn't be good. So, horrified and vengeful, I waited for her in the last corridor before the castle. I was ready to do whatever I had to. I would have done anything, so long as it stopped her."

He glances over at you, trying to look you in the eye. For some reason, he can't do it. Instead, he looks away, covering his eye sockets with a hand.

"Reasoning didn't work. Neither did negotiation. There was only one option left open to me—I had to fight her. And, to be honest with you... I would be lying if I said that I didn't want to. She'd killed my brother. Some part of me, no matter how small, wanted to see her blood splattered across the floor."

"She gave me a hard time. It was incredible how nimble she was. Most of my attacks couldn't so much as touch her. We went at it for what seemed like hours, and she was slowly starting to wear me down. I couldn't keep fighting forever. She knew it, too. That look on her face... I'd never thought the kid could look so bloodthirsty. Eventually, I got lucky. I hit her straight in the soul, and it killed her instantly. But then, something happened I never could have predicted."

"A black mist separated itself from the broken pieces of Frisk's soul. When it shaped up, it looked vaguely like a human girl, but it was shifting and ethereal, like some sort of ghost. 'Good try, comedian,' she told me. 'But I think you hit the wrong person.' She shot me the same demented smile that 'Frisk' had worn just moments before, and picked up Frisk's discarded knife. 'Now. Let's finish what we started, shall we?'"

"That's when it finally hit me. Frisk had never killed anyone. It had been this girl all along... this 'Chara.' It was Chara that had killed my brother. It was Chara that had baited me into killing Frisk. And it was Chara... who was about to have a fucking. bad. time."

"I'll spare you the details, but I eventually managed to shatter whatever was left of the little demon's soul. And then, predictably, the world reset. Things went back to being relatively 'normal.' Frisk was back. Chara seemed to have disappeared. I went back into my normal routine, which by that point completely revolved around Frisk."

"But then, Chara resurfaced. She remembered everything. She, like me, knew about the resets. She also knew that gaining the power of the six souls would make her all-powerful, and was desperate to get her hands on them. I never understood why, but she wanted to use them to destroy this world, and everyone in it. In the end, I was inevitably forced to kill Frisk, and then Chara, again."

"And so it goes. Reset after reset, I was forced to face the uncertainty of whether I'd be dealing with your pacifist sister, or the genocidal Chara. Time after time, I watched Frisk defeat Flowey, only to reset. Time after time, I watched Chara kill everyone I knew without remorse. No matter what happened, though, our story never reached any kind of ending. Frisk would always reset, and I just couldn't let Chara achieve her goals of annihilation, no matter how much I wished the resets would end. And so... here I am, still living in an unending cycle."

Tears return to Sans' eyes, but he quickly wipes them away. His smile grows in size when he turns to look at you, but it's painful how fake it is.

"Heh... I'm a mess," he sniffs. "Sorry. This is probably pretty uncomfortable for you."

"No, I... I don't mind," you say softly.

"You aren't angry with me?"

"'Angry with you?'" you repeat, genuinely surprised. "Why in the world would I be angry after listening to all of that?"

"I killed your sister," he points out numbly, his smile falling away just as quickly as it'd formed. "Several times."

"From what I gather, it was for a good reason," you counter. Then you sigh, trying to find the best way to communicate the reeling mess of information and feelings that's trying to sort itself out in your brain.

"Well, everything you've told me... it's pretty hard to believe," you concede. Sans' pupils dim a little bit and he looks away, unable to meet your eye.

"But you don't seem crazy," you say quickly. "And if you're not crazy, then logic says that you're either lying to me, or you have to be telling the truth."

Sans slowly turns to look at you, the slightest hint of hope making its way onto his face.

"You're really emotionally connected to everything you told me," I continue. "So I... I don't think you're lying. Therefore, no matter how hard it is to believe... you have to be telling the truth."

Tears are slowly welling up in your eyes again. You try to blink them back, but it has the opposite effect this time—they start to roll down your cheeks.

"It... it must've been so hard..." you murmur. "I-I can't even imagine..."

You sniff and wipe your tears away with your sleeve, only to remember that you're borrowing the jacket from Sans.

"Oh... sorry," you mutter. "I forgot that this was—"

You gasp as you suddenly find yourself wrapped in Sans' arms.

"Thank you," he murmurs. "for letting me talk to you."

"U-uh..." you stammer. Your face feels like it's on fire. "No problem."

"This is the first time you've ever fallen down here," he says softly. "That's gotta mean something, right? I can't help but hope that maybe... maybe this is it. Maybe now that you're here, Frisk will stop resetting. But hope is dangerous. If she does reset, I... I don't know what I'll do."

It takes you a moment, but you eventually return his hug. Even though he's entirely made of bone, he's strangely cuddly.

"I don't know how much use I'll be," you murmur. "But I'll do everything I can to help. Just don't give up, okay? There are people here that need you."

"I..."

"Sans, I know what kind of things run through a person's mind when they're desperate. I know what you were thinking about when you were alone up there. You can't do it. Nothing good will come of it. Okay?"

"...Okay," he says, releasing you.

"Good," you sigh. "Like I said, I'll try to help any way that I—"

"(Y/N)... are you blushing?" Sans asks, doing a wonderful job of changing the subject.

"...Yes," you say. "A guy I met an hour or so ago just hugged me—of course I'm blushing."

That obviously wasn't the response he was expecting, because that mysterious blue tinge automatically enters his cheekbones again.

"And so are you," you add, smiling. The blue of his blush grows exponentially darker at your comment.

"...Maybe a little," he admits, turning away to try and hide it. "Welp, we should probably get back to Paps and the kid. In the time we've been gone, they've probably found a way to burn the house down."

"Has that happened before?!" you exclaim, suddenly worried. You'd left your backpack at Sans' house, and you'd rather not have your last worldly possessions go up in flames.

"No. Well, not at my place, at least," Sans says, throwing you a wink. If anything, it makes you even more anxious. Sans stands up, and you quickly follow suit, readying yourself to run back to Snowdin at full speed.

"Hold on there, Buttercup," Sans says. "I know a shortcut."

Author's Note

Hey! This marks the end of the longest chapter yet--if I'm doing my math right, it's almost twice as long as all the others. (Woo!) I apologize if it was a little info heavy. I was never very good at writing expositionary stuff.

Anyway, in other news, thank you Bebe for the idea of using "Buttercup" as a nickname. It has absolutely nothing to do with the main character's personality or talents, but... it's cute, and it stuck. For anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about, Sans' is going to be calling the you Buttercup from now on. (That way, I don't have to write (Y/N) as many times.)

One last thing. I have a challenge for everyone. I want to know if anyone can guess what the main character (your) soul's trait is. Hint: it's not one of the cannon seven. (In other words, it's not determination, patience, bravery, integrity, perseverance, kindness, or justice.) Think about how the character's been acting so far, and let me know what you think. This will play a HUGE role in the story later.

--Zana