At first glance, time travel sounds like a great idea. Visit whatever time, whenever you want. Yeah, sounds great.

Sans thought so, too. He remembered being one of the first to sign up, to test the machine on its maiden voyage.

Looking back now, he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised when everything began to go wrong. He didn't like to think about it. He didn't want to remember.

But, sadly, that's part of the curse of being a time traveler. You have to remember.

Every.

Single.

Thing.

Though he wasn't cold, Sans shivered in the winter wind. It had been three years, and yet, he still wasn't used to being on the surface, seeing the sky, the giant, glowing orb the humans called the moon. It looked so different, somehow, than the last time he was here.

Frisk was getting bigger. They were nearing their thirteenth birthday now, and excited that they'd finally begun to surpass Sans' height. This amused Sans, though, for some reason, it made him feel strangely lonely as well. Even though it had been three years, he continued to watch Frisk closely, waiting for the moment when the kid would unexpectedly snap. If Frisk helped Toriel in the kitchen, Sans made sure he was there, making sure Frisk didn't handle anything sharp so they didn't hurt themselves…or others.

Sans stared up at the moon, brooding over his most recent conversation with Toriel, after she had put Frisk to bed:

"Sans, I think we need to talk."

"Sure, Tori. What's up?"

"It's about Frisk. …Do you really feel it is necessary to hover over them the way you do?"

"Whatddya mean?"

"I think you know, Sans. I do not know why you feel you cannot trust Frisk, but they have done nothing to prove that they are anything but an innocent child, have they not?"

"So far? I guess not."

Toriel hadn't liked that. She had wished Sans a rather frosty goodnight afterwards, and Sans, not ready to go home to an empty house (he and Undyne were still carrying on with their cooking lessons), had taken to wandering the forest they now inhabited.

Integrating with the human world had been…difficult. Even now, the monsters still kept mostly to themselves, for fear of being driven underground once more by terrified humans. Some, like Toriel and Papyrus, kept trying, and were eventually accepted by some humans. Toriel taught a small class of them at their local school, and Papyrus loved to run around letting everyone try his inedible spaghetti…but most humans were still keeping their distance. Sans didn't particularly mind—it meant he had less to worry about.

Still, it was a little boring that he saw no difference in between the life he lived underground to the life he lived now, save that there were often balls of light in the sky, their brightness dependent on what time it was. Nothing much had changed…and Sans was still waiting for the day that it would all just disappear, be rewritten, as if the trials and suffering they'd gone through meant nothing at all. Everyone would just resume the struggle of trying to get to the surface—or worse—the struggle to stay alive. The pattern had no rhyme or reason, really—sometimes Frisk was a good kid, but other times…

Other times, Sans didn't want to think about it. Remembering how it felt to die was awful. Remembering how it felt to kill was even worse.

Sans paused. He'd gotten used to the crunching of snow under his feet, but it sounded different now. He looked down, surprised to find that there were already footsteps here. Odd…no one else bothered to venture out here. The other monsters that lived near here had better things to do, and the humans that knew the monsters were here didn't dare to stray too close. It was very rare to get a straggler…

But Sans shrugged. The footprints might be human-shaped, but it wasn't his business if there was a human bumbling around up here. As long as they didn't hurt anyone, Sans didn't have to get involved. He almost moved on, but something else out of place caught his attention—a couple drops of a deep red liquid seeped into the snow.

Sans leaned over to inspect it, but there was no need. He knew exactly what it was: blood.

With a short sigh, the skeleton stood up straight. Welp, if he didn't find it, someone else would. And someone else might not be as nice as him. And so Sans set off, following the footsteps and occasional drops of blood. He thought of it as an adventure, a scavenger hunt of sorts. And the blood spatters were his clues. It was unclear at this point whether he'd find a live human or a dead human—there wasn't enough blood so far to add up to a dead human, but the more he saw it, the larger the likeliness of a dead human grew.

Sans wondered what he'd do if he found a dead human. Admittedly, his choices were limited—if the human was dead, he couldn't bring it back to the humans, because they'd think he did it. But if he left the dead human there, it would start to smell, and someone else would find it and bring it to the human's attention anyway. Either way, it was a bother, and Sans began to question his choice to go looking for it. It wasn't like he didn't have better things to do, you know. He could be hanging out at Grillbyz's new restaurant, or continue his brooding from earlier. Just because something slightly out of the ordinary had happened didn't mean he had to go chasing after it like a dog after a thrown bone—

Sans stopped. He had arrived at a nearby river, and next to the river…was a body. It was a tall body, with a tangle of dark hair sprouting from its head. A pale hand was splayed in the snow…next to another spatter of blood.

'Aw, hell.' So it was dead. That was fun. Sans almost turned around and left the body to its fate—he doubted very much the soul that previously inhabited the body would care if said body got eaten by bears or something, since the body was no longer in use—but something made him get closer. Maybe he just had a morbid sense of curiosity, but he wanted to see the face of the dead human. After all, he only saw most of them from a distance, and he wondered if this human had a face like Frisk's.

For being dead, the body sure was heavy. Sans slipped in the snow a couple times trying to turn it over. When he finally managed to get the body on its back, he squatted next to it, put out. He was getting too old for this.

The face on the dead human was a little like Frisk's, in that it had eyelids, presumably eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Other than that, it was a stranger's face. The skin was nearly as pale as the snow around it; the body might've blended right in, if it didn't have dark hair and clothes. Its cheeks were thinner than Frisk's, so thin that it looked unhealthy. Sans could almost see the bone poking through the skin. Well, it wouldn't be such a bad thing, Sans supposed—he never really got why humans had their skeletons trapped inside meat bags, anyway.

He poked the dead body's cheek experimentally, wondering if the skin would give way.

The dead body's face frowned.

Sans stared.

He poked the cheek again. This time, the body grunted, and the eyelids fluttered open.

Sans wasn't sure whether it was the moonlight or not, but whatever it was, the human's eyes looked silver. He would've believed them to be the eyes of a dead person, if the human hadn't opened them on their own.

The human blinked a couple times. It seemed to have trouble breathing—their breaths were sharp and ragged, their chest rising and falling rapidly. The eyes searched around, rolling until they landed on Sans.

Belatedly, Sans wondered if this human would scream. A couple of them did the first time they saw Papyrus. Sans wasn't much easier to look at.

The human did not scream. It stared at Sans, and Sans stared back. Another belated thought—was he grinning a creepy way right now? Ah well, couldn't be helped. He didn't have any lips, after all.

The human didn't seem like it would speak anytime soon. Sans wondered if it could. Or did it just prefer to sign, like Frisk? How should he know? Humans were weird.

Sans decided to try to initiate conversation.

"So. You're alive. That's cool." He grinned. "Or maybe it's…ice cold?"

The human didn't laugh. It was officially ruled as a boring human.

Its lips were trembling. Sans could only make out something that sounded like 'breath'.

"Didn't catch that. You'll have to speak up, since I don't have ears."

The human's lips twitched again. Sans leaned down further to hear better, and this time he caught the question:

"…Are you…Death…?"

'In this timeline? I hope not.'

"Why? Got a date with him?" Sans asked with another grin. The human's breath hitched in a strange way. Sans thought it might be laughing, but it started coughing instead. The human turned onto their side, their body convulsing violently. Red splattered the snow, staining the human's lips as well.

Sans stopped grinning. No matter how much death he'd witnessed, it never got any easier to see it. He didn't want to watch this human die.

Before he could stand up and make his escape, the coughing stopped. The human sighed, and began to push itself up. Sans stared, impressed. Maybe this human was more hardy than he thought.

"C-cold…" the human protested, and Sans was inevitably reminded of Frisk, who used to crawl into Sans's hoodie whenever they were walking anywhere in cold temperatures. He touched the zipper of his hoodie, lost in memories, when the human beside him swayed dangerously. Snapping out of his own head, Sans automatically reached over, his arms steadying the dizzy human.

"Whoa, take it easy. No need to have a swooning fit over me, human," Sans joked with a wink, while he inspected the human. They didn't look so good—if anything, they were getting paler by the second. Even if they might be on the brink of death, it wasn't a good idea for them to stay here. "Come on. I know a place nearby where you'll be safe. What's your name, human?"

The human started mumbling again, so even with how close he was, Sans couldn't be sure he heard what he heard.

"'Heiress'? You mean, like a princess?"

He got no response. The human's eyes closed, and they became still. The only way Sans could tell that they weren't dead was the rise and fall of their chest, and he sighed. Looked like he had no other choice.

"C'mon, your Majesty," he said softly, hoisting the human's body over his shoulder. It was difficult for Sans to carry the human—it was too tall, so with every step he took, he had to make sure the human's head wasn't hitting the ground, or their toes dragging in the snow. It was a long and arduous journey, and every step of the way, Sans was cursing himself for taking on such an impossible task. It wasn't like the human was his responsibility. Why did he care whether it lived or died?

Later, when he looked back on this moment, Sans would chalk it up to his intuition. He had to have known, somewhere deep down, that this human would change his life. After all, he was a time traveler. He knew everything.