He was dying again. It was almost funny.
Sure, it was exceptionally easy for someone as physically fragile as him to be taken down. Hell, he broke his tibia by jumping down a small set of steps just a year ago.
Well, it would have been a year if the resets didn't account for such an elapsed period of time.
So as he lay there ready to fade to dust and wake up back in Snowdin, he contemplated how a nerdy prankster like him lasted as long as he did against this adversary. How someone brittle-boned as he dodged attacks for so long made him the littlest bit proud of himself, a feeling that was profoundly rare for him.
Though, reliving this scenario so many times made it easy to predict movements and patterns in a person. The oddly high concentration of magic flowing through him certainly helped, too.
Oh, well. In the end, he could count on his resilience. He had always been emotionally strong, not easily rattled. He chuckled.
Well, maybe a strong front.
Whatever.
Still, death was painful. He never got numb to the feeling.
He opened his eyes, ready to see his room again. Ready to hear Papyrus yelling up the stairs for him to get up.
Horrifyingly, it wasn't the case this time. This was a first.
He found himself tied up by vines(?), a child with red eyes and a sadistic smile standing in front of him.
Chara.
No. No. No. No. No.
"Y'know, I'm sick and tired of you interfering, Sans-y." He felt disgusted. "Frisk is gone. I finally got control, you see?"
He hadn't felt such true fear in a very long time.
They walked up to him, whispering maliciously.
"I'll make sure you never try to be a hero again."
"I'll make sure he sees you die slow."
"Over."
"And over."
/
Papyrus woke up to screaming. His bones creaked as he rose from his bed, hurrying over to his brother's room. It was Tuesday; the night terrors were, for whatever reason, at their worst on Tuesdays.
It had become a biweekly occurrence, much to his chagrin. It had especially gotten worse in the past 8 months; well after they had began their comfortable lives on the Surface.
He asked Sans more than once why he was having such intrusive nightmares, both when awake and asleep. He never gave Papyrus a straight answer, often doing his trademark move of making a joke of it or simply encouraging his brother to laugh it off. It worked at first, but Papyrus quickly wizened up and realized that whatever Sans was going through ran deeper than bone.
It hurt to see him like this.
"Brother?" Papyrus called loudly, opening the door when Sans didn't respond.
He usually responded right away. He usually woke up immediately. Papyrus listened closely; Sans was pleading with an unseen force to stop doing something. Papyrus wanted to cry.
Seeing what lay behind the door was the equivalent of his soul hitting the floor and shattering.
"Oh my god!" Practically everything in Sans's room was off the ground. He was trying to fight something in his nightmare. "Sans, wake up!" There was no response.
This was new for Papyrus. It was almost scary.
"Sans!" he tried again, shaking his brother urgently. "It's ok! Wake up, brother! You are having a bad dream!"
"NO!"
Sans opened his eyes, a terrified Papyrus lifted up in the air. Sans noticed that his hand was extended.
Papyrus felt himself drop, landing on his feet with a small thud. With him, everything else in the room fell back to the ground as well.
Sans looked horrified, haunted even. His eye was glowing bright blue, indicating he still was prepared for danger.
"Brother," Papyrus began shakily, "are you…?"
Finally, Sans acknowledged his brother in front of him. The blue flame disappeared, replaced readily by tears.
Sans never cried. Sure, he had been a wreck the past year but Papyrus had seen Sans cry a grand total of twice before this, and that was it.
"Oh, Sans," Papyrus said, his voice much softer. He quickly crossed the room, sitting on the rather messy bed. He put a comforting arm around his brother, who quickly leaned into the touch.
"pap, i—"
"Do not apologize. You have nothing to apologize for and frankly, I will not accept it." Papyrus held his brother tighter.
Still trying to come back to the present and decide what was real, Sans laid his head down into his brother's lap. Though startled at first, Papyrus smiled empathetically as his brother grabbed his knee-bone.
He read about this, doing his own research when things started getting really bad for Sans. He, The Great Papyrus, decided that he needed to protect his brother more than ever. So, he went on what humans called 'forums' and started to find ways to get his brother better.
All he could do was offer him the best support he possibly could.
/
There was a memory tucked carefully in the back of his mind. It was a happier time, a safer time. Sans remembers, briefly, his mom singing to him to help him and his brother fall asleep. He remembers laying his head in her lap, her soft fingers running over his scalp as his eyes grew heavier. Papyrus would be nuzzled up under her arm, lain against her, as she ran her other hand over his own arm.
It was one of the few memories from his early childhood that he retained. Sans cherished and latched on to any recollection he had of his mom. He had to; Papyrus had no memory of her at all.
That, coupled with the fact she was long dead and buried. Sans knew that much. He remembers that he was very young when it happened.
Sans had to hold onto that among other things. He had to remember that he also had a dad, a renowned scientist from what he recalled. Memories of an apprenticeship came to his mind, but they were mostly foggy. He had to remember that he once had mismatched eyes, one amber and one blue. He had to remember that he once had skin, specifically medium-olive with dark freckles on the apples of his cheeks in a pattern nearly identical to his mom's.
Unfortunately, he doesn't remember where he specifically came from or whether he and his brother always lived in the Underground. That would probably never be solved.
As Papyrus ran a bony hand over his head and down to his fingers, Sans's memory of his mom performing the same ministrations came to his mind.
Papyrus seemed to remember the actions, but not the person their mom was. Sans wasn't sure how comforted he was by this fact.
Hey, at least it was something.
Really, as much as Sans liked this, —the feeling that he wasn't going to disappear—when his own mental health turned against him like it was now, he couldn't help but feel self-hatred bubbling up inside of him. It was not Pap's job to be taking care of him. They had been on the surface for one year, exceedingly longer than ever before. The chance of a reset was slim-to-none. He shouldn't be this fucked up.
Yet, here he was—a broken and pathetic mess that needed to remind himself several times a day that he was not at war. That he was not in danger and that Papyrus was alive and well.
Why wasn't it this bad when he actually had real shit to worry about? Why, now that everything was almost certainly going to be okay, was he in the most compromised and vulnerable mental state he had ever been in?
It infuriated Sans to no end.
Sometimes, though rare, Papyrus had to intervene to help ground him to reality. Kind of like now; Sans was never happy when this happened. It made his feelings of helplessness become all the more prevalent in his think space.
Hell, the other day a fucking daisy triggered a panic attack in him and he's not even sure why. It's bad when a little flower can mentally cripple someone, especially someone like Sans, who often covered up serious emotional issues through puns and humor with little effort.
Sans felt Papyrus shift a little bit and clear his throat.
"Sans?" he asked quietly. He was still running a hand down his sleeved arm comfortingly, having learned from the wonders of the Surface Internet that it helped 'ground' a person with Sans' condition.
Still holding onto his brother's knee with one hand, head in his lap, Sans glanced up to look at Papyrus. "yeah, bro?"
"I just recalled something about our childhood. Do you remember watching that science fiction film from the Surface? The one that is one of your favorites now?"
Immediately, Sans lifted his head off of his brother's lap. Papyrus still kept a comforting hand on his shoulder bone, however. "wait. you remember that?"
"I recently recalled it. Alas, it's the only one I've recounted since last time we talked about this."
Sans bowed his head, smiling fondly at the memory. "it's one of those things i could, heh, spend hours geekin' out about."
Papyrus gave his shoulder bone a squeeze. "You have always gotten particularly excited over science fiction. I am glad you—" Papyrus stopped mid-sentence, and Sans noticed that there were tears forming in his eye sockets.
The shorter gave his brother a comforting pat on his upper arm bone. "hey, pap, it's alright. what're you glad about?" Sans asked patiently.
"I know it's silly," Papyrus said. "Here I am starting to get emotional when you are the one truly suffering."
Sans' face became a bit more serious, "it's not silly, bro." Seeing Papyrus starting to get upset triggered Sans more, but he stayed as resolute and stoic as possible.
"I am glad you still have the capacity to be passionate about something." He sniffed, shaking his skull to regain composure. "It means there is hope for you to get better! I know it will take a while, but I believe in you brother! The Great Papyrus will be here for you every step of the way!"
Tears were now freely streaming down Papyrus' face, but they seemed to be happy tears. Sans shook, practically trembling as he tried to remain strong. He had been pathetic enough already. He was supposed to be laid-back and collected, not a broken mess.
His eyes widened.
Correction: he had always been a broken mess, ever since the accident. Especially after the anomaly began. Sans spent his life hiding his emotions. His brother was such a wonderful soul, the best one he could ever ask for. Sans envied his ability to properly express himself emotionally.
Why did he have to hide behind such a carefully crafted mask?
It was lonely.
'Bonely,' he thought with bittersweet amusement.
"Sans?"
Sans realized Papyrus was shaking him a little. "hey," he said in a whisper, trademark smile back on his face.
Papyrus saw through.
The taller hugged him to his chest, thinking his brother had another flashback. "It's okay, brother. You are safe." His voice was as gentle as Sans had ever heard.
That's all it took.
With his own feelings, his brother's kindness, and the throes of trauma tugging him every which way, Sans finally broke down. It wasn't like before; not like the smaller episodes he had experienced in the past. He genuinely sobbed, his bones rattling from his lamentation. He held onto Papyrus like life-support, afraid he would fade into dust if he let go.
Taken aback, Papyrus was frozen in place as his normally collected brother bawled his eye sockets out. Eventually, he wrapped his arms around Sans' large frame and tried to conceal that this was making him weep as well. He had never seen Sans this wrought with grief. Well, that's a lie. He had seen him depressed to frightening extremes, had experienced him silently panicking as he relived things he didn't dare talk about, but Papyrus had never seen Sans this emotional about anything.
Sans was tired, in an existential way. He shed countless resets worth of pain, a number that could easily equal 20 years if he looked at it in perspective. The cries were raw and aching, as if a dam had finally broke and poured out all of his agony, all of his grief. This was something new to him.
"Shh, I'm here brother." Papyrus began stroking his back, Sans still crying himself out. He was sure that Sans picked up on the shakiness in his voice. "You are safe, Sans. I love you."
"a skeleton," Sans managed in a raspy voice.
Normally, Papyrus would have groaned at the bad pun. It was different at that moment; the gloominess of the room lifting as both brothers began intermixing their cries with laughs.
Soon, the sobbing had subsided completely. Sans was limp against him, drained emotionally and physically before he began to snore. It wasn't hard for Papyrus to forget just how physically frail his brother was, evident with how easily he tired himself out. It was more evident now that he was a bit more, well, affected.
Papyrus laid him down gently, tucking the covers around him before retrieving a rag from the kitchen. He cleaned off his face before whispering: "What would you do without me, lazybones?" He smiled fondly as Sans continued to sleep.
Soon after, Papyrus went back to bed, more at ease than ever. He was so happy he was starting to break his brother's many emotional barriers.
This was a big step forward.
/\\/\\I'm official Undertale trash now. And yes, this is named after the beautiful 'Everything Stays' written by Rebecca Sugar from Adventure Time fame.
Sans is very relatable to me. Before I got help (in fact I still fall back into this habit sometimes), I acted chill and cracked bad jokes to mask severe depression and trauma issues. At some point though, those bottled up emotions are bound to explode outwards. Sadly, I am all too familiar with this. I identify so strongly with the Sad Clown archetype that I can't help but push Sans's character to the limit. And Papyrus's too, as I think people give him way too little credit just because he's innocent and naive. C:
Fun Fact: PTSD can develop months to years after the trauma is experienced.
Oh, and I do not own Undertale and seek no monetary gain from this story.