((Note: This is literally being crossposted from AO3 only as a joke because a friend dared me. While the chapters will be published here the same as they are on other sites, if you want the full experience with proper authors notes, links to fanart and side stories, etc., I suggest you try the original copy on AO3:

(archiveofourown)(.org)(/works/5571245/chapters/12843326) (please note the url is split up to get around this site's bullshit formatting. You'll have to copy and paste in pieces.)

The absolutely gorgeous art used as the coverart for this story is fanart by blueberrychill on tumblr. you can find the full version of the art at: (fallendownfallenback)(.tumblr)(.com)(/post/148286058973/pastel-clark-blueberrychill-this-is))

It's just a ribbon.

Just a plain red ribbon, absolutely nothing special about it.

At least, that's what Sans tries to tell himself as Frisk stares up at him, their expectant look slowly morphing into confusion while he sits there frozen.

Well, not completely frozen, he notes, as he realizes with a sort of belated indifference that his hand is shaking, red tangled between his fingers in a tight grip.

It's not even similar looking, really— Shiny new velvet, soft and clean, with that faint smell of freshness all new clothing has. It's likely come off a rack at some store the kid was at, one of a thousand of the same. There's nothing about it that should stand out in the slightest.

Except the color— A bright, deep red that's too familiar for words. He knows, in some rational corner of his mind, exactly where he is, who he's with, and what he's holding in his hand, but his vision flickers, and he's instead looking down at another ribbon. It's the same color, but the fabric is a thin cotton, frayed at the ends, stained by dirt and mud, and held together only by knots tied in odd places sloppily, but with care and love.

It's a mess of a ribbon, but regardless it looks in place on top of a head of hair a shade of orangey-red he'll later come to associate with the sunset, once monsters reach the surface. Years after he first sees the small face framed by the mess of gingery curls that the old ribbon can't quite keep tied back neatly.

And it really is such a small face. So young. Too trusting when it looks up at him like he's some kind of hero it can place its faith in.

Until it doesn't, and all that's left is a pale body splattered with blood that runs and stains orange curls the exact color as that same ribbon, now clenched between the fingers of a little boy as he hunches over a broken body and keens and screams for his sister with a kind of helpless grief that Sans knows well.

It reminds Sans all too much of the near hundreds of times he will kneel like this next to Papyrus's dust, clutching his brother's scarf to him in a desperate attempt to stem his shaking, his frame wracked with sobs, and occasionally a kind of desperate laughter, because for some stupid reason he dared to hope things would be different, no matter how many times the same result happens again and again.

He shouldn't pity this boy, not when he knows what comes next. The death, the destruction— Everything that comes as a possibility with each reset the boy brings about in a desperate attempt to reverse what can't be undone.

But yet, he does feel pity. And when the boy looks up at him, murder in those dark eyes, he feels guilt, because this is your fault, you let her die, you monster—

"…Sans?"

He startles, and refocuses on Frisk standing in front of him, confusion now laced with concern as their eyes flicker between his face and the ribbon he has clenched in a death grip. Forcing his hand to relax as best he can, Sans meets their eyes carefully. They look so hesitant— Not necessarily afraid, but definitely worried, and a little bit spooked.

It's Frisk, he reminds himself firmly. This is Frisk, here with you now. You survived. Your brother and your friends survived. You are on the surface. This is the good timeline, and it's real.

That still doesn't stop a part of him from wondering when this will just turn into another nightmare, if this is the moment when Frisk's eyes turn red, when they stop being themselves and instead are the demon that he's killed and has killed him so many times. After all, this is too good to be true. He's a coward who's run before and would run again, probably. And he's still waiting, looking at Frisk— For red eyes, red-stained hair, the red of blood, and the red of the one human soul that made it out alive.

Sans waits for the punishment he deserves to come. For something, anything to rip away this timeline and send him back, because he of all people shouldn't have gotten a new life above the Underground, especially when Frisk is still looking at him with concern, but trust in their eyes.

Don't trust me, he wants to say. Don't trust me. Everyone who does dies, whether in this timeline or another.

He feels a small hand touch his, and Sans flinches back on instinct, curling his hand with the ribbon close to his chest. Frisk pulls their own hand away quickly, and looks at him with hurt eyes. And… just... For God's sake, he can't do this right now. The kid doesn't need to see him like this.

It's just Frisk. It's just a ribbon.

All the kid wants is for you to tie the ribbon in their hair.

Pull yourself together, Sans. Don't make Frisk see how messed up you really are. Just apologize, and put the damn ribbon in their hair.

He opens his mouth to do just that, but he can't get a single sound out.

"Sans? Are you alright?"

The voice makes him flinch again, and he glances up at Asgore peering down at him, now standing behind a nervously shifting Frisk.

Ah, yes. He forgot Asgore was going to be here today, to spend time with Frisk. That's probably why the kid had wanted the ribbon in their hair, anyways. They'd seemed to have dubbed Asgore one of their favorite people, much to Toriel's chagrin.

Asgore finally appears to notice the ribbon in his hand, and the way he startles fills Sans with a sort of guilty, vindictive satisfaction. If there's one other person who should feel the strangling guilt and regret he does, maybe even more so than him, it should be Asgore.

He shouldn't be so petty. He gets along with Asgore well enough. They're… friends, he supposes. In the same way everyone Frisk has adopted into their misshapen, makeshift family is.

That still doesn't stop him from understanding why Toriel is so tense around Asgore, why she only allows him to step foot in her home because Frisk has decided they like him. Asgore may be a good person at heart, he may have done what he did for the good of monsterkind— in some warped, twisted way— but that doesn't reverse broken bodies and stolen souls. Sans will be the first to admit himself a coward, but if he's one, then Asgore is several times worse.

Finally, finally, Sans feels the ribbon being yanked out of his hand, and it feels like he can breathe again. He collapses backwards onto the couch and watches distantly as Asgore hands the ribbon back to Frisk, and says something to them quietly. They look in concern at Sans once more, before nodding and backtracking out of the room, the now crumpled ribbon held carefully in their hands.

Sans closes his eyes and dips his head back against the sofa pillow as he feels Asgore sit next to him, and wishes dully that he could just have been left alone, at least for a bit.

"Are you alright?" Asgore asks him, and Sans can't help the dry, hollow laugh he gives in return.

" Sansational." The pun tastes bitter as he says it, and is without any of the usual humorous inflection he gives it.

He feels more than hears Asgore hesitate next to him, and opens his eyes as he turns to face the floundering King of Monsters, stuck in trying to find the right words of… What? Comfort? Pity? Something.

Sans sighs and shakes his head when Asgore finally goes to speak. "Don't. Just… don't. I'm not exactly in a good frame of mind right now, if you can't tell, and I'd rather not say something I'll regret and risk upsetting Frisk."

Asgore pauses, and then ploughs on regardless. "I'm sorry—"

"Sorry doesn't reverse it, does it?" Sans snaps, "At the end of the day, she's dead. They're all dead. They still don't get a second chance like the rest of us. I still had to watch them die, I still had to watch my mentor literally destroy himself trying to find a way to stop what you started, and I still—" He cut himself off. "Nevermind, just… go spend time with Frisk, alright? I don't want to do the whole heart-to-heart about everything. I never will. Offer it to Tori instead. Maybe if you two got everything out, and she had a proper chance to yell at you, it'd stop the god-awful tension we all feel when you two are in a room together."

Asgore's face crumples, and yeah, okay, Sans will admit that was a low blow even for him. He thinks about apologizing, but Asgore's already standing up and leaving the room, so instead Sans lets his head fall back once again, closes his eyes, and tries not to think about it, any of it.

He tries not to think of odd-colored eyes and broken bodies, trusting faces and spears through chests, rage, and resets, and guns pressed to heads. He tries not to think about unfixable machines and a void of space where the closest thing he ever had to a parental figure vanished like he never existed. He tries not to think about dust everywhere, and the not-Frisk with demon eyes and a doll-like smile.

He tries.

He doesn't succeed.

xxx

Sometimes Sans wonders how this is the best end result, the very best option of the timelines. It's arguably what might be called the "good ending", he supposes, except that aside from maybe calling it, this, the end of the darkness of the Underground, this isn't an ending, really. It's a beginning, if anything else. A new opportunity at life.

Or a second-chance of sorts, for those of them that let the darkness of the Underground warp them into doing things they should not have in order to even have a chance at escaping to the surface. Taking life, warping it, bringing it back— Hell, creating it, if that damn flower really is the end result of Alphy's experiments. "Playing God", is the phrase the humans would use, he thinks.

Sometimes Sans thinks they should start a club, those few of them who have seen the impossible and done things they shouldn't. Himself, Alphys, Asgore, Frisk… even Toriel, probably. There's no doubt that she's been through some crap... Stuff she saw, possibly even did (not like he has a clue), back when she was Queen, or when she spent those decades in the Ruins, her only company the few monsters who lived there and the human children that passed through on their way to their deaths.

Regardless, everyone's haunted in their own ways by the Underground, whether they deserve it or not. He sees it in the way Papyrus sometimes goes still, breathing turning erratic as, if only for a second, he sees the timelines he, thankfully, can't remember. He sees it in the way Undyne sometimes tenses and reaches for a spear she no longer keeps at her side, her eyes trained on Frisk as if she can remember the demon in Frisk's body that cut her down again and again, on its way to destroy the world. He even sees it in Mettaton, on the rare occasion he actually lets his mask of bravado come down and acts like a real person, in the way the robot sometimes stares at the sunlight like he can't believe it's real, or looks at his own body like he expects it to collapse under him.

None of them remember, luckily. Sans knows this for a fact. They've got lingering impressions from the other timelines, ones that have created certain nuances or instincts, but they don't remember. Which is fair, Sans thinks. None of them deserve to be burdened with that— Not even Mettaton, who, despite, Undyne's claims to the contrary, he actually gets along pretty well with when Mettaton stops acting like a tv-drama tool. They're both, at least in part, sort-of snarky assholes at heart, which… doesn't actually make for the worst friendship.

Sans isn't sure how much Alphys remembers. As far as he can tell, she doesn't have an explicit memory of the timelines, at least not anymore so than, say Papyrus or Undyne, but she spent enough time around himself and Gaster that, even if they kept the majority of their experiments with the timelines secret, she must have had some idea of what was going on. Knowledge of the timelines isn't enough to always prompt memory, but it can be.

He doesn't think she remembers, and hopes he's right about that. She's already got enough ghosts clinging to her, with the way she still flinches when someone mentions the determination experiments, the way she still can't look at golden flowers without getting this sad look on her face. She's definitely made some mistakes, but Sans can't help but wonder how many of those problems, with her insecurities, with her loneliness, with all her fears, and all the pressure that was pushed onto her and forced her into the determination experiments, could have been prevented if she hadn't been alone, if he hadn't abandoned her and run when the accident had happened.

Just another sin of his to add to the tally in the end, he supposes.

Toriel doesn't remember, either. Which Sans is glad for. She's one of the kindest people he's ever met, and, excluding his brother, could be considered his closest friend. Besides, she's already got enough to deal with. She doesn't like talking about it either, but Sans can see it in the way she sometimes looks at Frisk like they're a ghost, about to disappear forever. She blames herself— For the deaths of her children, and for not doing enough to stop the human kids from leaving the Ruins.

It's not her fault, none of it is. Sans didn't protect them enough, the ones he found at the Ruins door. First out of weakness, then out of fear. Asgore killed them, or he let his guards do the dirty work. Same difference.

Asgore is, as well, something of a mystery. From what little Sans could get out of Frisk, it appears he could count the number of times he killed them when the two fought, but that isn't evidence of understanding the nature of timelines, or even their existence. Sans thinks maybe he has some memory of the other timelines, but possibly only what extends to the particular periods of time when he fought the humans, killed them. He doesn't really know, and frankly he's sort of past the point of caring. Sans doesn't wish his own memories upon anyone, no matter what that small, selfish part of him that believes Asgore deserves this at least as much as himself says.

Which leaves him and Frisk.

…And the flower and the not-Frisk, but Sans isn't really counting them.

Frisk remembers everything. Every timeline they went through, both the ones where they had no control over their own body, and the ones where they had to fight for it. It makes Sans sick, that the kid is stuck remembering everything that demon put them through, everything their body did without their consent.

The guilt eats away at them everyday. He knows, they've told him, on their quiet conversations on the rooftop in the early morning. It's the one exception Sans makes to his little 'no talking about it' rule. Just because he doesn't want to talk about the shit that he's seen and done doesn't mean it's fair to force that arguably unhealthy way of coping onto the kid. And who else are they going to talk to? Sans is the only person who gets it, who remembers. The kid, or at least the kid's body, has killed him, he killed them in return, and they both remember it. It makes for an odd friendship, but Sans supposes that as the only two with any real clue what happened, they've got to stick together.

His own memory is… sporadic, to say the least. Sometimes he remembers the gaps and repeats perfectly, sometimes not at all. Often he won't remember what went down in a previous timeline unless he leaves himself some reminder, a note scribbled in a language that's now dead to everyone barring him, left in the one room he's managed to preserve between timelines. Reloads of saves that are close in time to what the previous present was are almost impossible for him to differentiate. He still doesn't know how exactly how many times he gave Frisk the same speech about judgment, or exactly the number of time he's done any given thing.

Time, for him, is messy and complicated, and leaves him feeling much older than he physically is.

Usually, he's got a pretty good memory with resets, at least ones caused by a human. A lot of the resets caused by the flower are… hazy. There are some things he remembers, some things he doesn't, and some things he's blocked out. He'll never have a complete picture of those years when that thing wreaked havoc, and he's slowly come to be okay with that. It befriended everyone sometimes, and killed everyone sometimes. He's killed it on more than a few occasions, and in retaliation it's tortured him to death more times than he can count. It played with all of them like they were toys for its amusement, and that's all he needs to pass judgment on it.

And no, he doesn't care where it came from or who it might have been before, no matter what Frisk has hinted at and his own gut tells him is the likely truth. It still killed his brother, his friends, of its own volition again and again, for nothing.

He doesn't pity it.

He doesn't.

At least… not that much.

((The official blog for Not As Simple is on tumblr here: (fallendownfallenback)(.tumblr) (.com))