You woke up to descending snow. You don't know how. You just had a distinct feeling like you shouldn't have been able to. You could feel the cold, but it didn't bother you at all as flake after flake dropped onto your face and whispered by your ears.

Dark trees loomed up from the ground, shooting all the way up to the sky. But. . . wait. That. . . . . that wasn't the sky. It looked more like a cave ceiling. You focused more on the ceiling from where you lay, spotting a large stalactite made of ice, by your best guess. How was it snowing? Where where you? You decided to look around.

As you turned your head to the left, you heard crunching snow to your right. You whipped your head around and instantly regretted it as your head stung and spun, making you feel a strangely empty form of nausea and dizziness. It was more like a memory of nausea. Once your vision cleared and stopped spinning, you opened your eyes again. No one was there, but there were foot imprints that abruptly stopped as though someone SHOULD have been there. Were you going insane? Was this a dream? Did you have any injuries?

Slowly, you turned your head back to the left. A huge door stood there ominously. It was probably about 8 feet tall and about as wide. It tapered at the top like an upside down shield with a split down the middle. It was colored a dusty purple and had an emblem that was split between the two parts of the door. You immediately got the feeling that this place didn't have happy memories. You gingerly pushed yourself into a sitting position and pulled up your hand to rub your aching head. That's when you noticed something was very wrong.

You didn't have any skin.

Hyperventilation. Panic. Fear. Confusion. Concern. Worry. Nausea. Silent screams threatened to escape.

What the FUCK happened to you?! You kept staring at your hand, nothing but bones. You kept expecting it to just fall apart. How was it staying together? Then you realized something else was off about all this. You had no memories. There was nothing. You just knew that there was supposed to be flesh on your hand.

The crunch of snow happened again, but you turned your head slowly this time. There, in front of you, was a person. But he was a skeleton too. Could you call a skeleton a person? Did the same thing happen to him, whatever this was? A loose pair of black shorts hung around his pelvis, but he was so short that they were practically pants. He had on a white cowl-necked shirt and an unzipped blue hoodie. His pink slippers were making tracks in the snow, with the tails that happen when you drag your feet. His eye sockets held a soft white light in two small spots, and they shifted when he looked you up and down. An almost face-splitting smile was plastered on his face.

"hey, kid. you okay? you're not looking so hot."

You felt slightly miffed at being called a kid, but as you tried to remember how old you were, you realized you had no idea. You didn't even know your name.

"hey."

You looked up at him sharply and he extended his hand out to you. Bone.

"can you even talk, kid? you look freaked out."

Well, at least this time you didn't get that weird memory version of ill. You took his offered hand and he gently helped you up. You didn't feel any pain but you winced anyway. This was a strange sensation, and an even stranger situation, like rubbing your hand on a pumice stone. You pulled your right hand next to your left and inspected them side by side. Same thing. Bone.

"the name's sans. sans the skeleton. i'm a sentry in these parts, but to be honest with ya, i'm not very good at that. heck, i didn't even see ya. where'd ya come from, anyway? what's your name?"

"I don't know," you said quietly as you shook your head. You had the overwhelming feeling of helplessness and continued to stare at your hands. To be honest, you were just surprised you could speak at all.

"you don't even know your name? must have been one hell of an impact."

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, making a grating bone on bone sound. The sound made you physically cringe in that way that nails scraping on chalkboards do. He must have noticed because he gripped you tighter. He gave you a quick once-over before he spoke again.

"maybe we should go back to my sentry station, sit you down. ya know, so i can monitor you."

You nodded, suddenly feeling a rushing wave of exhaustion. You truly doubted you could have gotten lost down the straight path through the trees to the sentry station, but Sans held you up, putting himself under your arm, and led you there anyway. He sat you down on the stool behind the desk thing that served as his station.

"ya hungry, kid? there's some stuff on the shelf underneath."

He waved his hand lazily towards the shelf as he walked around the station to look at something in the snow. Truthfully, you didn't know if you were hungry. But even so, you looked down and saw bottles of ketchup neatly put into rows by mustard and relish. It struck you as odd, but you grabbed a bottle of ketchup anyway.

"i feel like i need a ketch-up."

He winked at you and you couldn't help but laugh. A punny skeleton? Wait. He WINKED.

"ah, good. we'll get along just fine, but my bro hates puns. sad, isn't it? i feel i must-ard warn ya."

A chuckle emanated from you before you could stop it. You smiled at him. He made you feel at ease, less scared, even though you knew absolutely nothing about him. It was nice, and kind of reassuring. He started casually drinking some ketchup he pulled from his pocket.

"Oh, come on! That doesn't make any Sans!"

He gave you a bit of a chuckle and an even bigger smile, if that were possible. At the very least, it felt more genuine.

"so you feelin' any better, kid? oh, let me get that cap for ya. you might, uh, have a problem opening it. you're shaking pretty bad."

You hadn't noticed until just now that you were shaking, thanks to Sans's comment.

"Hey, Sans? Where am I?"

He looked up at you, his hand hovering above yours on his way to grabbing the bottle, like he was waiting for permission. You closed the gap between your hands and handed him the bottle. He started unscrewing the cap before he responded. He seemed concerned for a split second, or maybe you were seeing things.

"you're in this cool place called snowdin."

"You're awfully punny, aren't you? Not that I'm complaining. Puns. . . .kind of a guilty pleasure."

"yeah, i tend to pun as much as i can. i get real bored just sitting here all day. gotta amuse myself somehow, right? well, i tend to go to grillby's or take naps too. speaking of, ya hungry? like real kinda hungry?"

"Yeah, sure, I guess. I don't know when the last time I ate was."

He gave you a skeptical look, as though he was trying to figure out what was wrong with you. He seemed to dismiss it almost immediately, but part of you felt like he had lingering concerns this time.

"heh. you sure don't know a lot. anyway, i know a shortcut there. take my hand."

After you took his proffered hand, he snapped his fingers with that awful grating sound again and you could have sworn you saw, for the briefest moment, a faint blue line in the air. Before you had the chance to look again, you found yourself facing a person with fire for a head. You tried to keep your eyes from going really wide and screaming. The only thing that stopped you was the spinning in your head.

"hey grillbz."

The flame man looked up at Sans and nodded.

"you want a burger or fries, kiddo?"

"Um, I d-don't have any money," you stammered as you tapped your pockets. "I don't want to put you out. How – ?"

He looked at you with a smirk and waved off your concerns.

"ah, don't worry about it, kiddo. 'sides, someone's got an eye socket on ya."

You looked at him incredulously. An eye socket? He noticed the look and pointed behind you. Some strange, pale fish monster was sitting behind you and just staring. You turned back to Sans and couldn't help the shudder that crept down your spine. He seemed to get a kick out of that and laughed a little.

"don't worry 'bout it, kid. she does that to everyone."

He swiveled on his chair and turned his head to half look at you, half eye the monster behind you. You were sure there was some kind of silent communication that happened there because you heard the chair behind you squeak, then he turned his full attention back to you.

"so? what did you want?"

He looked at you expectantly, so you smiled.

"A burger? Please?"

"you heard the kid. two burgers and a bottle of ketchup, grillbz."

Then you had a sudden horror strike you. Where did the food go, if you were all bones? You scanned Sans and found no major stains at the bottom of his shirt, so it must go somewhere, right?

"hey, you okay, kid?"

Well, shit. He noticed you looking.

"Um, y-yeah. I'm just realizing it's strange that I'm a skeleton and I eat. Food. Where does it go?"

Sans only offered a shrug in response. Well, that wasn't very helpful.

You sat in mildly uncomfortable silence for a while, looking around at the tavern you were in. Tan woods and brown walls surrounded the tight room. There were a couple booths and a few tables, one of which had a large dog bowl seemingly screwed into it. The bar itself was incredibly smooth and smelled like almonds, which was an odd scent to pick up, considering the rest of the tavern smelled like a fast food restaurant run by a kennel club. There was an old busted jukebox in one corner of the room. A purple neon sign saying "Grillby's" rested above it, the comma occasionally blinking out and a martini glass underneath the name turning on. All in all, it was clean, but obviously frequented.

"so where you from?"

"You know, I don't know that either."

"ok, kid. you're worrying me. grab your burg and we're heading to dr. alphys. grillbz, put it on my tab."

You didn't even realize that the burgers had come out. Sans handed you a fistful of napkins and started looking around wildly. You just managed to wrap your burger before you were yanked through some weird hole in the air again. This time, you saw no faint blue line.

"Holy shit, Sans! I – "

"kid, shut it. you need help. something's real off about all this."

His expression changed to one of worry, fear, and distrust. He knocked on the door and went to go stand behind you, his hands finding purchase on your shoulder blades. A yellow-orange lizard-like monster opened the door. She was wearing large glasses that were far too large for her light hazel eyes, and a lab coat, but no shoes. Lab coat? Was this a lab?

"dr. alphys. we need your help."

She didn't seem to know what was going on but stammered a welcome to the two of you and ushered you in. She stepped aside and allowed you both past her plump form. Sans pushed you inside and turned to begin explaining before he'd even gotten all the way through the door.

"al. the kid's got no recollection of anything. not even a name. what the hell could cause that and how do we fix it?"

She looked at you with a very worried expression and turned her back on you two to go upstairs and grab some things. You heard clanging and scraping somewhere upstairs, and while she was gone, you took a quick, cursory look at her desk. It was littered with blueprints, manga, tea bags, one tea cup that kind of looked like her, some tools, and quite a few ramen cups. Turning to Sans, you chose to start a conversation, even though you honestly just wanted to run. Something deep inside you was screaming at you that you didn't want to remember anything.

"Sans? Why is this a big deal? So what if I don't remember anything? Can't I just start fresh?"

"it's a big deal because we don't know how old you are. we don't know where you're from. what if your parents are looking for you? we don't know your name, what you like, anything. and it's weird that you just keep staring at your hands like they're wrong. what's going on with that, kid?"

"I just feel like there should be more there. Like flesh. Skin. Something."

It felt natural to tell him this, even though the feeling you were getting from the situation was anything but natural. Sans gave you a weird look you couldn't quite describe, like he was staring into your soul and didn't like the results. You felt another shiver jolt down your spine and you felt like your entire body could have collapsed under that gaze. If you'd had skin, you were sure it would have felt like it was crawling. When he finally spoke, his tone made you think you were going to die right then and there.

"kid, you ever kill anyone?"

The question floored you.

"What?!"

"look, kid. i like ya, so i'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. but you have more exp and lv than anyone ever should. not like a mass murderer or nothin, but like you've killed. you. . . ."

He had been gesturing with his hands, but when he trailed off, his hands dropped to his side like he'd been defeated. His grin dropped and he rubbed his eyes, and that grating noise happened all over. It made you want to slap your hands over what you assumed were holes in your head.

"Sans? What the hell is exp and lv?"

"it's uh. . . . it's a way to measure someone's evil, i guess. yours is higher than it should be. you've killed. somewhere in the past, you've killed someone. and not just one person either. but exp stands for execution points. lv is level of violence. your lv increases the more you increase your exp. and you have more than one kill under your belt, bucko."

The news hit you like a ton of bricks and you leaned back on to the table behind you for support. You've killed? Who? Why? How? You couldn't see yourself ever doing that. Granted, you didn't see yourself doing much of anything. There was no way of knowing what you did before you lost your memories. For all you knew, you threw rotten tomatoes at old people.

Sans calmly watched you have this existential crisis, his serious face only causing more panic on your end.

"here. i'm gonna do something a bit weird. i don't like it and it might hurt. but until the doc gets back, it's the best i can do."

You gave him a look. Was he going to kill you?

"can i take out your soul? not to like keep or nothin', just to poke around a bit, get the memory back. kinda. i can place a field around your soul so it's not like it's in danger or anythin'."

You decided that all this shit was strange and terrifying, so you nodded silently. You had no idea he was being serious until you felt the warmth leave you as a green, glowing heart formed in front of your chest. Seeing that heart suddenly made you feel dirty, violated, and scared to the point you were fearing for your life. It felt like there was a second you, tethered, but separate, experiencing things all on its own and causing a wholly disorienting feeling. You just wanted to slam it back into your chest as quickly as possible. But your curiosity won out over all of that. Was this what a soul actually looked like?

When you looked to Sans he looked. . . . you didn't have a name for that expression. Was that horror? Surprise? A mix of the two? Something else entirely?

"Sans? What is it?"

"ummmmmmm, kiddo, a monster's soul is white. just white."

You were utterly confused when he muttered the word "kindness" to himself over and over. Alphys was coming down the escalator by this point, but you didn't notice until you heard a clanging and clattering noise. You had been completely ensorcelled by this thing, this heart, floating right in front of your chest, bathing everything in the room with the slightest tinge of green.

"Sans? Is that – ?"Alphys started.

"yeah, al. a human soul. but there's no monster part to it. it's just. . . human."

"Okay? Is that a bad thing?" you had to ask.

"kid. this is worse than bad. this is horrible. you're a monster with a human soul. but how?"

He trailed off again.

"how did this happen? this could be incredibly dangerous to us, alph. SHE could be dangerous to us."

He glanced at you with a face of equal parts disgust and pity, but then reached out to touch your soul, poking a single finger into the center. The pain was like being stabbed through the gut with a red-hot knife, but worse. There was no way to accurately describe what that feeling was, what that kind of pain was like. You screamed an ungodly noise and collapsed on to the floor, and the pain seemed to last an eternity. Finally, Sans withdrew his finger.

"done."

You couldn't seem to catch your breath, the whole world was spinning out of control, and your head felt like it had been split in half. You clutched your chest as it felt like your sternum was splitting into a millions pieces. You were only vaguely aware of Sans talking to Alphys.

"well, the kid's got that going for them. they killed in defense of their charges. medic of some type."

That was the last you heard clearly before the world went dark.