Your Perspective

"Sans!" you exclaim, your eyes shooting open.

You sit bolt upright, and wildly look around. When you realize that you're safe and in your own room at Toriel's, you blink in confusion and take a deep breath, collapsing back on your pillows. You must have been dreaming.

Well, that was one depressing dream. I think... I died?

An uneasy feeling settles over you, and you stare up at the ceiling as you try to puzzle it out. Something seems... off. You aren't sure why, but you have this feeling that you're forgetting something. Something important. You try to remember the details of the dream, but the harder you try... the more muddled they become.

Oh well, you think with a sigh. It was just a dream, anyway.

Even as you tell yourself that, though, you can't shake your uneasiness. Something... something just isn't right. You think on it for a few more moments, before shrugging to yourself and rolling out of bed. There's no point dwelling on it—no amount of brooding is going to force you to remember.

The scent of freshly made pancakes wafts through the air, and you can't help but sniff deeply, your nose in the air. They smell really good, like melted butter and chocolate... but for some reason, the idea of eating pancakes doesn't really appeal to you. In fact, you're not even hungry.

Weird.

You shrug the sensation off and get dressed, then head out towards the dining room.

*** 

You're on your way to Snowdin, snow crunching dully under your feet. Normally, you'd be listening to music right about now. It's a long walk to Snowdin, and it can get boring after a while. Today, however, you simply stare at the ground. You mind is in a daze, and you're still trying to figure out why you're feeling so strange.

Breakfast had been hectic. You'd made fun of Frisk, you'd been invited to one, then two parties, and Frisk had basically turned you into a mailwoman. None of those things happen every day—it should have been a novel experience for you. But ever since you woke up, you've been having really bad cases of déjà vu. Like... really bad. Every single thing you said, did, or even thought was giving you déjà vu.

It's even happen right now, as you walk towards Snowdin. Dread hangs over you like a cloud, and you find yourself keeping an eye out for... something. You're not really sure what that something is, but even so, the thought of running into it is making you uneasy enough to look over your shoulder.

This is crazy, you tell yourself. There's nothing out here but me—why am I so paranoid all of a sudden?

You shake your head vigorously, trying to clear it of the fog of uncertainty that seems to be hanging over you. It doesn't work. If anything, it seems to be getting worse, as if your body is telling you that you're slowly getting closer to the danger it's trying to warn you about... whatever it is.

I really need to talk to Sans, you decide.

That's the other thing that's been bugging you. Ever since you woke up, you've been having this... this insatiable need to talk to Sans. This sense you're getting goes beyond your friendship with the skeleton—something, some part of you, is urgently telling you that you need to speak to him...

...before something bad happens.

A shiver runs up your spine, and you draw Sans' jacket closer around you. You pick up your pace, your gaze locked on the horizon. Snowdin's lights should be coming into view soon. Sure enough, cheery red and green lights slowly work their way into your line of sight, like a rising red and green sun over an ocean of trees. Relief washes over you, and you find yourself breaking into a run.

I'm coming, Sans.

You're so engrossed in the lights that you don't notice the vine that's snaking its way across the ground in front of you. You breath catches in your throat as you trip on it, and your face stings as it makes contact with the freshly fallen snow. You groan and sit up, drawing a gentle hand across your face as you check for damage. Luckily for you, there isn't any.

"Well, well, well," a voice says. "Look who's back from the dead."

You stiffen, and then slowly turn to face the owner of said voice. It belongs to a flower. A small, golden, sentient flower. You should be surprised—you've never met a flower that can talk, much less one that has a face—but somehow, this flower seems almost... familiar.
And it's not the good kind of familiar, either.

Terror shoots through you at the sight of it, and you scoot backwards in a blind panic, desperate to get away from it. The flower simply laughs at you. Its laugh sounds almost friendly, but its twisted smile, however...

"W-wha—" you stammer. "Wh-who...?"

"Oh, of course, silly me," the flower says in a sing-song voice, disappearing into the ground. You flinch as it reappears directly in front of you, and scramble to get to your feet. You don't look where you're going, though, and you fall back on your rear after colliding with a pine tree.

"You don't remember me, do you?" it asks, its stem growing longer as it towers over you. "Then allow me to reintroduce myself. I'm Flowey."

"F-Flowey?" you stammer.

You would say something else, but you aren't thinking straight. Something about that voice, that... that leer...

"That's right. I'm Flowey. Flowey the Flower," he says, baring his teeth at you. "But you already knew that, didn't you, (Y/N)?"

You're convinced that you've never met the flower before, but your body doesn't seem to agree with you. You're so terrified of the thing that you're actually shaking, and all you want at the moment is to get away from it.

"W-what do you want?" you ask. Flowey smirks at you, as if he's amused by your ignorance.

"Well, I would explain it to you," he says sweetly, "but I'm afraid I don't like to repeat myself."

Flowey somehow forces your soul to phase out of your chest, and as it floats tamely in front of you, he stares down at it with an unfathomably greedy look on his face. As shudder runs through you at the feeling of exposure that comes with having your soul out against your will, and your back presses up against the tree as you instinctively try to move away.

"Wow, (Y/N)," Flowey says, still using his cutesy voice, "your soul is pretty resilient, isn't it? It's completely unscathed—well... almost. Not even you can pull off a complete recovery."

What does he mean? you ask yourself.

You examine your soul, trying to find whatever damage he's referencing. Your soul looks the same as it always does—big, blue, and almost painfully bright. For some reason, though, the fact relieves you, as if you were expecting something a lot worse.

No, wait... what... what's that?

The mark is so faint that you'd almost missed it. Smack dab in the middle of your soul is a tiny, jagged white line. It looks like some kind of... scar. The sight of it makes you instantly nauseous, as though your body has remembered something that you haven't.

How... how did that get there? What's going on?!

"Golly, you must be so confused," Flowey says, smiling wolfishly at you. "I should probably help you out, huh?"

You get an especially strong sense of déjà vu as spinning white pellets appear in the air around your soul.

"I' L L    P U T      Y O U      O U T     O F      Y O U R      M I S E R Y!"

You turn your head away as the pellets slowly start to close in, Flowey's maniacal laughter serving as the soundtrack to your own personal horror film. Then, all of a sudden, everything feels... far away. Flowey's laughter grows eerily faint, and time itself seems to slow down, the pellets slowing their approach on your soul.

...What's going on?

You look around in a daze, trying to find the source of the strange magic. Your gaze locks on a shape in the distance, grey and indistinct against the white of the snow. It looks like... a giant head. As you catch sight of the figure, it seems to smile at you. You and the strange monster stare at each other, each of you fascinated by the other. As you watch, the strange monster seems to shiver in the fabric of reality, pieces of it lagging behind it as it moves. The sight is almost surreal, little rectangles of grey hanging in the air for a few moments before catching up with the rest of it.

It's almost like it's... glitching, you think.

The glitchy monster seems almost concerned for you. Its eyes are wide as it studies you, and it seems to be trying to say something. When it realizes that you can't hear it, its eyes narrow in concentration, and a strange tingly sensation weaves its way around your head. You recognize the feeling instantly. It's magic. A deep voice—garbled and indistinct—resounds throughout the confines of your mind.

"☼☜💣☜💣👌☜☼📬📬📬"

Deep in the recesses of your mind, memories are stirring. This monster... you've seen this monster before, if only for a few seconds. You grit your teeth as the monster increases the magic it's using on you, the pressure of it causing a headache to blossom. That's not all, either—your déjà vu is insane right now.

"🏱☹☜✌💧☜📪 ☼☜💣☜💣👌☜☼📬📬📬"

Whatever the monster is trying to do, it doesn't seem to be working very well. Your hands curl into fists as your head begins to throb, and you start to hallucinate. Two different versions of reality are actively overlapping each other, each vying for control of your perceptions. Half of the time, you're sitting on the ground, your back to a tree. The other half, you're high in the air, vines wrapped painfully tightly around you. It... it seems so real—you can even feel Flowey's thorns biting into your skin.

"☼☜💣☜💣👌☜☼✏"

Just as you think your head might explode from the weight of the monster's magic, something clicks. And, just like that, you remember. You remember everything.

Oh god, you think, horror overcoming you. I... I died. Flowey killed me!

Your gaze is blank as you stare at the ground, your mind racing with all of your newly rediscovered memories. The more you remember, the more anxious you become.

Sans... if the last thing Sans saw was me dying, then...

He may not know you're alive.

I need to get to him! Before... before...

"Hello, (Y/N)?" Flowey asks. His voice sounds as if it's coming from the other end of a long tunnel, faint and echo-y.

You don't respond, instead trying to get a glimpse of the monster that had restored your memory. In the time that you had looked away, though, it had vanished—all that remains of it are a few rapidly fading glitches.

"Hey, are you even listening to me?" Flowey asks, his tone betraying his annoyance. "Earth to idiot. Come in, idiot."

You slowly turn to Flowey, your newfound memories making your fear melt away. Yes, you aren't scared anymore—not now that you know that you can revive yourself. Instead, a feeling has aroused in you that you haven't felt in a long, long, time. Anger.

"You sure are a space cadet, aren't you?" Flowey asks, his face harboring a hint of confusion. "Shouldn't you be worried about the fact that I'm about to... hey! What are you—"

"Oh, just shut up, will you?" you growl, standing up and brushing the snow off of your jeans.

"Wh-what?" It's Flowey's turn to stammer. "H-have you forgotten that I have—"

"Yeah, yeah," you sigh. "You have my soul hostage. Big whomp."

You focus your attention on your soul, and get it to float between a gap that's formed between two of Flowey's pellets. Then, before he can reorganize them, you recall your soul back to you, allowing it to phase into your chest. Flowey blinks, his spinning pellets dropping pathetically out of the air as he stares at you. You can't help but snort at the look on his face. His disbelief is hilariously ironic—it's because of him you can control your soul so well in the first place.

"Well, this has been fun, but I have stuff to do," you say nonchalantly, pointedly turning your back to the dumbfounded flower. "See you around, Flowey."

You move to take a step forwards, but you don't get very far. One of Flowey's vines shoots out of the ground and wraps itself around your elevated ankle, pulling you off balance. You gasp as you land hard on the ground, the air leaving you all at once.

"Hold on juuuust a minute, (Y/N)," Flowey purrs. He drags you through the snow towards him, additional vines bursting out of the ground and wrapping themselves around you as you struggle. "I don't remember telling you that you could leave."

He raises you into the air and dangles you upside-down above him, so your faces are almost touching. Despite the discomfort that comes with having the blood rush to your head, you look him with defiance in your eyes, refusing to give in to his terror tactics.

"I don't remember telling you that you could put your hands—oh, excuse me—vines on me," you reply coolly.

"Wow, someone's feisty today," Flowey chuckles, his smile widening. "Good. It's so much more fun to kill people when they struggle~"

"Yeah, yeah," you mutter, rolling your eyes. One of Flowey's eyes twitches at your unworried tone, and more vines wrap around you in response to his irritation.

"It seems to me," he hisses through his teeth, "that someone's lost their fear of death."

"Oh yeah?" you ask, uninterested. "That's very discerning of you."

"Either you're suicidal," Flowey mutters, "which I doubt, or... you remember. You remember, don't you, (Y/N)?"

"Do I remember that you're a psychopath that's beyond reason?" you ask. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. Now, if you'll kindly let me go—"

"Losing your fear of death is dangerous you know, (Y/N)," Flowey continues, feigning concern. "It leads you to make all kinds of stupid decisions."

"What, like killing people for their souls?"

You must have struck a nerve, because the vines tighten around you, their thorns on the verge of piercing your skin.

"Whatever happened to 'you must be doing this for a reason?'" he asks sourly. "Aren't you supposed to be empathetic?"

"I tried that, remember?" you ask tiredly. "I tried to understand—I tried to talk to you. And what did you do? You killed me. What am I supposed to do, Flowey? Fall into the same trap twice?"

You can still see the sadness in him, but for once, you don't try to ACT on it. After what he's done to you, all of your sympathy for the flower is gone. He might have a reason for his actions, but this time around, you just... don't care.

And Flowey seems to realize it. For a moment, you think you see a look of utter defeat flash across the flower's pale yellow face. Just as quickly as it had appeared however, it vanishes, his usual horrific smile taking its place.

"Well, if you aren't afraid of dying anymore, I guess I can have some fun," he says, his every word dripping with false happiness. "I'll kill you. And when you come back, I'll kill you again. Again and again... until you beg me to take your precious little soul from you!"

Flowey forces your soul out of your chest again, but this time, he wraps a vine around it, holding it in place. And instead of pellets, several vines erupt out of the ground by your head, each of them targeting your exposed soul. Remembering how much just one vine had hurt, your body begins to tremble against your will.

Despite what Flowey may think, you're not completely fearless. You're definitely scared... but you know that you have to stay strong. You have other people to think about. There are people out there—Frisk, Sans, Toriel, Papyrus—who need you. And so you take a deep, slightly shaky breath, and lock eyes with Flowey as his vines ready themselves to strike.

"U N T I L      N E X T     T I M E,    ( Y / N )."

A floating, goat-like skull appears out of nowhere, a sphere of blue-white energy gathering in its open mouth. Flowey's face falls as he slowly turns to face it, his fear betrayed in every drooping petal.

"Not this time, buddy."

A beam of pure magic erupts from the skull's mouth, bathing the flower in its glow. The vines that had been holding you turn brown as they start to wilt, and you easily break their now-brittle stems and free yourself, sliding gently to the ground.

Somehow, Flowey managed to survive. He's completely blackened, practically burnt to a crisp—but he's still alive. Sans takes a step towards the flower, that strangely beautiful fire-like magic once again lighting up his left eye.

"Get dunked on."

Flowey, with a look of complete and utter terror on his face, vanishes into the dirt. Once again, they've run away. You can see why. Looking up at Sans from your place on the ground, you can't help but marvel at the amount of power that he'd just displayed.

"Sans!" you exclaim, a smile lighting up your face. "I'm so glad..."

You trail off as you catch sight of Sans' face. His glowing eye has faded away, but his eye sockets remain empty as he stares at you, a heart-wrenching mixture of sadness and guilt on his face.

"Sans?" you ask uncertainly.

"I..." Sans puts a trembling hand to his face, and looks away. "I..."

"Sans? Are... are you okay?"

A smile slowly forces itself onto his face, and he... chuckles. Or, he seems to be trying to pass the outburst of as a chuckle—in reality... it sounded more like a sob. Your soul twists in concern for the skeleton, and you stiffly get to your feet and reach out to him, intending to lay a hand on his shoulder bone. Before you can, however, he turns to look at you again. His irises flicker weakly in their sockets, as though they could disappear any second.

"Good thing I got here in time, huh?" he asks, his lighthearted tone painfully fake. "If I showed up much later, you would've been in a pretty grave situation."

A pained expression flashes across his face, as if he'd realized too late just how morbid that pun was.

"Heh... sorry, Buttercup," he continues shakily. "That wasn't very punny."

He's still trying to keep up that comic mask of his, even though you can plainly see the pain that lies beneath it. You take a step toward him, but he doesn't react—it's almost as if he's staring right through you.

"I... I thought that you... you were..." he mumbles, tears springing to the corners of his eyesockets. "But you're not. You... you're still here. Heh. Heh heh..."

He sounds so broken...

You pull the skeleton into a gentle hug. He stiffens momentarily, and then goes completely limp in your embrace, his forehead pressed against your shoulder, and his hands stuffed into his pockets.

"Hey... it's okay," you murmur. "I'm alive, Sans. I'm here."

"I... last time, I... I didn't make it in time," he whispers. "I... he..."

"I know," you say gently. "I know."

He shakes his head from its place on your shoulder, and a tremor runs through his body.

"No, you don't," he chokes out. "You don't remember. He... he killed you, (Y/N). I... I couldn't save you."

"But you did save me," you murmur. "I heard you... and I held on for you. I'm not going to let you lose anyone else, Sans. I promise."

Sans slowly pulls away from you. That comedian's grin of his has completely disappeared, but the hope that you see shining in his irises more than makes up for it.

"You... you heard me?" he asks. "You remember?"

"Yeah."

"But... but how? Frisk... Frisk never..."

"I don't know," you say. "I didn't remember, at first. I've spent most of my morning reliving yesterday—well, I mean, last timeline, I guess?—but then, this weird monster showed up, and somehow... I don't know."

While you rambled, a small but genuine smile had made its way onto Sans' face. When you'd finished, it widens just a little bit, betraying a hint of genuine mischievousness.

"Well, I've gotta say, (Y/N)," Sans says, "it's good to snow you're alive."

You groan and roll your eyes, but you beam at him all the same. You hate to see him so depressed, and you're glad that you managed to make him feel better.

"Really, Sans? A pun? Now?"

He teasingly nudges you with a shoulder, one eye closing in an extended wink.

"Hey," he says cheekily, "you sing, I crack jokes. Everyone deals with stress differently, Buttercup."

"W-wha—Sans!" you squeak, a red tinge entering your cheeks. "Why'd you have to bring that up?!"

"Oh, come on," he says, easily dodging your swat of retaliation. "Your singing is beautiful. You should do it more often."

"N-no!" you stammer. "I—I can't—no!"

"Why not?" he asks.

"...I don't like singing in front of other people," you mutter. "I'm not that good."

"Well, you're a lot better than me," he says, walking with you as you continue on your way to Snowdin. "I sound like a cheese grater."

Somehow, you doubt that statement. Sans' voice is so deep and smooth... you get the feeling that he probably sings a really good baritone.

"I'll be the judge of that," you say, glancing slyly over at him. "Next time I sing something—if I sing something—you've gotta do a duet with me."

"For some reason, I'm startin' to regret this choice of topic."

"Hey, you're the one that wants me to sing—"

Luckily for Sans, your body decides that a change in subject is in order.Your stomach lets out what seems like the loudest growl in the history of stomach noises, and you can feel embarrassment welling up in you. You should've eaten those pancakes at breakfast this morning—even if it was for the second time. Sans' eyesockets widen in surprise, before chuckling gently at the delicate blush spreading across your cheeks.

"Hungry?" he asks.

"Y-yeah..." you mumble, looking away.

"Welp, I know a place," he says. "How about's we talk about all this craziness over burgers and fries?"