Till the End of Time, an undertale fanfic

—'Till the End of Time —

~An Undertale Story~

The skeleton's grip on your soul is released as he takes deep breaths, clearly exhausted by his uncharacteristic efforts to stop you. His skull is even melting a little due to the Determination it took to give you such a bad time.

Again.

You know he knows more than he lets on. Maybe he doesn't remember, per-se (otherwise he wouldn't end up being so predictable, with the same old speech and everything), but he can obviously tell something about your resets. How many times you died against him, for example.

THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN DEATHS.

All courtesy of Sans the Skeleton. Turns out, when he "can't afford not to care anymore", he REALLY means that. After you beat him for the first time…

He never killed you again.

You were so ANGRY. Killing him ONCE was satisfying, sure, and the ultimate power you received for it made all your troubles worth it. You held the fate of the world in your hands, and once you went through that door there would be no stopping its destruction. But…

You weren't done yet.

You wanted to PAY HIM BACK.

At first, he didn't really notice his own death. After being killed about twenty times, he started to figure it out. The look on his face was hilarious. You'd honestly expected him to just sit there and not fight you after that- but he had more strength in him than that.

So you went back.

And back.

Reset after reset after reset, all so you could kill him the exact number of times HE killed YOU. So far, you've killed him a hundred and fifty-two times, not counting this time because he's not dead yet, though close to it.

"huff… puff… all right. that's it." He says for the hundred and fifty-third time, "it's time for my special attack. are you ready? here goes nothing." And hey presto, NOTHING happens. Ugh, that joke's really getting old. You're not sure how he's STILL managing to repeat himself, despite remembering his own DEATHS now.

You just stand there. Waiting. It's not your turn, and you can't bend the rules while he's watching, because he'll just PING you right back again if you try with that magic eye of his. You've tried. So you just sit down to wait him out.

Again.

"yep. that's right. it's literally nothing. and it's not gonna be anything, either. heh heh heh… ya get it? i know i can't beat you. one of your turns… you're just gonna kill me."

You DID interrupt in a previous try, but all that did was keep him awake longer. There just wasn't a point to it. Better to let him talk himself out so you could kill him again.

"so, uh. i've decided… it's not gonna BE your turn. ever. i'm just gonna keep having MY turn until you give up. even if it means we have to stand here until the end of time. capiche?"

That's why he STILL hasn't given up, despite your having killed him so many times. While you still reset, he has a chance to actually DO it. To just stand there until you give up. He'll never do it, of course, nobody can stay awake until the end of time, but he'll try. And he'll do the run-up fight as well, as if he thinks he's doing something new.

Maybe he does. He knows he's died. He knows YOU died. But maybe he doesn't realise that even with all his knowledge of quantum physics and the code of this world, he's STILL predictable. Just like everyone else. Even FLOWEY wasn't exempt, and HE kept his memories perfectly and used to be able to reset himself.

Well, you're not going to tell him. You have no reason to, and never will.

"you'll get bored here. if you haven't gotten bored already, i mean. and then, you'll finally quit."

Behind his ever-forced smile, you know he's suffering, just like you want him to. For all that talk, he knows you'll NEVER give up, and that he'll NEVER stay awake 'till the end of time. He knows you'll kill him. But he still hopes you'll give up anyway. As if, somewhere beneath his laziness and his fatalism, he has the same old naive belief as his idiotic brother.

That, if you reset enough times, you'll end up becoming a better person.

He doesn't realise that the opposite is true.

"i know your type. you're, uh, very determined, aren't you? you'll never give up, even if there's, uh… absolutely NO benefit to persevering whatsoever. if i can make that clear. no matter what, you'll just keep going. not out of any desire for good or evil… but just because you think you can. and because you "can"… … you "have to"."

At this point? Yes. Very much so. You still remember when you "fell" down here. No, you jumped. Mount Ebbot is a place where people disappear, and you went there to do exactly that. You expected to die.

Instead of shattering, leaving the pieces to linger among those golden flowers forever, your soul was basically glued together by the remains of a soul belonging to a child named Chara, who refused to let you go, refused your offer to let them take over your body if they'd like to live so much and leave you to sleep at the back of your subconscious in peace, all because they knew how you felt… Though they told you a bunch of other excuses before they finally admitted it.

Chara… wasn't the greatest person. But they cared deeply about the monsters that took them in and cared for them with greater love than any human had ever had… and they wanted you to be happy here like they had been. Despite plenty of monsters wanting to kill you for your stolen soul. They were your guide, your partner, your friend.

There were times when they wanted you to fight, for your sake. You showed Chara another way, that everyone deserved redemption, that you could always spare the lives Chara would have taken in your place. You taught them how to be a better person.

You saved everybody.

"but now, you've reached the end. there is nothing left for you now. so, uh, in my personal opinion… the most "determined" thing you can do here? is to, uh, completely give up. and… (yawn) do literally anything else."

If only… If only that truly were the end.

It wasn't. At first, everything was fine. Humanity was (obviously) divided about accepting monsters, but Toriel opened a school, Asgore became dedicated to gardening, Papyrus learned how to drive, Sans finally had a future to look forward to, Mettaton became a famous TV star, Undyne became a police officer, and Alphys learned how to animate as part of her very own anime team.

Thinking of Alphys, she managed to find a way to separate you and Chara's souls. Actually, that was the easy part- humans can't absorb human souls, so all they needed was a nudge to separate. "Like two magnets w-w-with the same charge!". It was harder to find a way for Chara to live without being trapped in someone else's head, but they found a way through sheer Determination. Literally. That's what allowed them to came back, even if they would always share a mind with Asriel, they had different bodies now.

You finally gave Chara that hug you really believed they needed, and reunited them with their parents- so you ended up becoming siblings.

Then everything went wrong. It always happened sooner or later, no matter WHAT you or anyone else did. Some human, wether by accident, because they were mad over the previous six children, or because they were just one of those rotten people, would always find out just how weak the monsters were compared to humans…

At first, people would just take advantage of the monsters' kindness, the same way they once took advantage of yours… but soon after, there would be chaos. Monsters disappearing left and right. If anyone was foolish enough to kill Papyrus, Sans would snap and go on a rampage- and THAT wasn't pretty at all. Monster children got ganged up on. Toriel's school got closed due to monsters being too afraid to try living there normally. Worse, nothing could really be proved because when a monster dies, they turn to DUST. Chara was right- humans are horrible.

And so you went back.

And back.

The monsters couldn't live down there forever. You tried that too. It got too crowded, something went wrong in the CORE, eventually they couldn't feed everybody (even monster food has to come from somewhere), the sheer amount of concentrated magic brought the whole place down of their heads…

All you could do was keep going back.

Somewhere along the way, you stopped caring. You got curious. You finally killed someone.

The feeling of getting XP was too good to resist, simply because it was new. After the next few deaths, not even Chara could stop you as you went on your rampage. YOU drove them MAD with the pain you caused them, and now you can NEVER take it back.

Where there was once a guide, a friend, a sibling… there's now a malicious, malevolent, megalomaniac.

You don't care about them anymore, either.

…What's taking Sans so long to fall asleep? His eyes are drooping, but still he just stares at you, yawning occasionally, intent on making you sit here 'till the end of time. Hmm. Maybe you ARE getting bored. Oh well. Chara will NEVER let you give up- despite everything, they're still your partner. They'll make sure you finish what you started.

Instead of falling asleep, Sans says something new. "Kid… i know what you're doing. You're just toying with me aren't you..? Say… y'mind telling me what's going on in that messed-up mind of yours to cause that totally dead expression, since we're here and all that?"

"There's no point. You won't remember."

"well, then tell sans number four hundred and eighty-one as well for me, ok?"

There's nothing left but silence after that. Nothing happens. Sans still doesn't fall asleep like he's supposed to. Chara whispers angrily in my head, urging me to DO SOMETHING about this, kill Sans, and drop this whole revenge plot before he actually DOES keep you trapped here 'till the end of time. You refuse on the revenge thing, and can't do much about the rest.

Eventually, even your partner grows silent. You can feel them, waiting to strike, poised like a hunter within your mind. The second Sans is asleep, you will strike. And that will be that.

He doesn't fall asleep.

…

You start talking, knowing all the while that Sans doesn't really care. He's just bored too. Doing nothing works both ways. You're not really sure why, exactly, but you tell him everything. Every fleeting thought you had during his battle, right down to your past, detailing why you came to Mount Ebbot in the first place and why you started killing everybody. Now that you've started, you just can't stop.

The skeleton stares back in cold silence, his judging gaze locked onto your dead expression.

Then he starts talking too, his speech punctuated by yawns. Good. Maybe the sheer effort will force him to sleep wether he wants to or not. His measured, wavering voice slowly, slowly breaks down as he explains…

How he'd always had to be so careful because of his pitifully low HP. How far he'd had to stretch his powers to be able to keep supporting his brother and himself with multiple jobs. How the previous Royal Scientist, W. D. Gaster, was ultimately wiped out of existence in his own attempt to understand the world's coding. How he followed in Gaster's footsteps, only to curse himself with the knowledge of resets. How, after living through the six other humans' and Flowey's resets, he could no longer go on… and gave up.

He only started really feeling things again after watching you kill everybody you could reach.

Then… his eyes close… and he finally… finally… falls asleep.

He doesn't bother trying to dodge as your knife slices clean through his ribcage, spilling a built-up store of undigested ketchup out his bones. He coughs, and a little bit of ketchup spills out of his mouth, too. He mutters, "welp. I'm going to grillby's. papyrus, do you want anything?" as his body, curled around Papyrus's dumb scarf on the floor, slowly disintegrates into a pile of grey dust in a hoodie.

You go back.

Again.

Just like you always will, from now 'til the end of time.