Atlas
This is another prompt from my 100 Themes Challenge on A03 that I decided to make into its own small oneshot on here. I've always wondered how Frisk would feel about having reset powers and the burden of controlling time itself and what would happen if she was honest with Sans about having them so this story, originally named Complicated for its prompt word, was born from that.
Save. Load. Reset.
Something as complicated as turning back TIME, and it's set up as simple as freaking video game.
She could feel it coiling inside her. It had saved her many times from the brink of death, taking her back to her last Save Point and letting her try again. It had let her overwrite her horrible accidental murder of the only person she had ever considered a mom. It had let her go back in time enough to delete King Asgore's death and give her friends a better future.
She should have been happy to have that kind of power. But instead it terrified her.
How the hell was she supposed to handle that kind of power?
What if when she went back in time, she made some dumb choice she thought was inconsequential, but it ended up causing an apocalypse? And she couldn't figure how to change it back because she didn't know exactly what choice it was that had done that, especially if it was something tiny that spiraled into a butterfly effect?
What about the timelines where she had died, or had reset over, like the major one where Flowey had killed Asgore? Did they run along their own like they were a river and she had gone back and chosen a different path, or had she erased them fully? Did they still exist? How were her friends and family faring there if they did?
What would happen when she died of old age or something? Would the power die with her? If she had children, would they be burdened with it? Or would her death send her back to when she had fallen into the Underground for the first time? Would she be trapped in an infinite time loop, having to do the same things over and over, her friends and family not remembering her, fighting over and over again?
Would this drive her insane? Would she end up like Flowey?
Flowey had called it the power of a god; the ability to turn back time, erase death, erase the consequences of your actions, erase your sins...
But there were always consequences. And what would be the consequences of her own manipulation of time, of her cheating death time and time and time again?
Why did she even HAVE this power? She was no god! She was only a fourteen year old girl from Ebott City who had no clue what she was doing.
All she wanted was to live her new life with a mom and friends who actually loved her. She wanted to bake pies with Toriel and sit next to her as she read a book out loud to her. She wanted to do puzzles and make spaghetti with Papyrus, playfully flirting with him just to see him blush because he was so adorable when he did that. She wanted to train and cook with Undyne, watch anime with Alphys, joke around with Sans, play with Monster Kid, take dancing lessons with Mettaton, and plant flowers with Asgore while trying to learn about the gentle person behind the scary mountain king.
And for the most part, she did just that. She never reset. She never wanted to. But still, even unused, the power and the possible consequences of it burdened her thoughts.
The weight of it, and of everything that happened in the Underground, made her feel like Atlas, holding the entire world on her shoulders and slowly sinking under the weight.
It hurt so much. She felt like it was crushing her.
And the worst part was she couldn't even tell anyone and ask for help. Everyone would think she was crazy!
Until she realized that one person wouldn't.
...
One day, seven months after they had reached the surface, Papyrus had asked her to bring a load of laundry upstairs to Sans. She had carried it upstairs and set it next to his door, accidentally bumping the door. Much to her surprise, it creaked open.
She had never been in Sans's room before, not once. He normally kept it locked and didn't let anyone other than Papyrus in.
She knew it was an invasion of privacy. She knew it wasn't nice to snoop in his room.
But despite having the power to control time, she was a fourteen year old girl, stupid and curious. She stepped inside.
She saw a self sustaining trash tornado, a broken machine, a messy bed, and a notebook on his desk. Again, stupid teenage curiosity took over and she took a peek.
It was entries, in scientific jargon she barely understood, but it was talking about timelines and anomalies. Maybe this could help her somehow! She continued reading it, and ten minutes later was so busy trying to decipher it that she didn't hear Sans come in his room.
"Hey, kiddo. What are you doing in here?" Sans asked suddenly from behind her and she yelped and dropped his journal. "You know you're not supposed to be snooping around in other people's stuff."
"Sans...I...I..." she stammered. "I-I'm sorry...I-I shouldn't have..."
"It's okay, kid. Just don't do it again." It was casual, but still a warning.
"I-I won't. Sans?"
"Yes?"
"If you had the power to travel back in time, what-what would you do with it? How-How do you even handle that kind of power?" she whispered.
Sans froze for a split second, then joked that he'd use it to sleep fifty hours in a day. Then when he saw the sad, scared expression on her face, he got serious and asked why exactly she was asking him this.
"Because...I'm your anomaly." she said. Then she cried.
...
He led her to his bed and had her sit down. He told her to tell him everything. She spilled the entire story, from her first death in the ruins to when she had panicked, fought back, and accidentally killed Toriel the first time without meaning to, then, broken with grief and guilt, LOADed over her mistake and brought herself back to before she had done it, to Flowey having known this and taunting her about it, to all the times she had been killed in her journey through the Underground, to her final reset to try to free her friends.
And Sans listened, worried, but he didn't act like he hated her. And he believed every word she said.
She cried more. He hugged her.
At one point, she yelled at him for not keeping his promise and letting her die twenty six times. He apologized and softly told her he had made a lot of mistakes too, and that that was one of the biggest.
She asked him if there was a new timeline for every time she had reset, either intentionally or unintentionally. He told her it was possible, but he didn't know for sure because he didn't have memories of anything beyond the point of reset.
She felt terrible. He told her she had tried her best and that everyone was happy in the here and now.
She asked if everything would reset if she died of natural causes. He was quiet for a few minutes, then told her he didn't know for sure.
She cried even more and told him how scared she was of getting caught in a time loop. Of how she was worried she'd make a mistake or use her power the wrong way. She begged him to take the power away from her.
He told her he understood. Quietly, he told her of everything Flowey had done. How in some timelines he had appeased everyone. How in some he had KILLED everyone.
And of one where Flowey had only killed Papyrus.
And how he remembered it all.
For the first time since she'd known him, he broke down and cried. It was her turn to comfort him now and she hugged him tight. Like her, he had kept his burden to himself, not even telling Papyrus as he didn't want to burden his innocent brother with that type of pain.
She told him he could talk to her at any time.
She promised that she'd do everything in her power to never make him suffer that again.
They talked about how to try to get rid of the reset ability, everything from feasible theories(like Sans's Determination Extraction machine to try to pull out enough of Frisk's Determination to make the Reset power follow it.) to silly ones(Sans was still pretty sure that shooting the Reset Button with a Gaster Blaster would only cause a hole in the wall.) They discussed backup plans and what to do if there was a death reset, just in case.
Somewhere in the whole conversation, they both realized they were only people trying their best, and that was okay. Things might be hard, but they would make it, because they had each other and family and friends who loved them both and who they both would do anything for.
Whenever they left Sans's room to Papyrus's and Toriel's calls for dinner a few hours later, they both felt a little lighter.
The power to reset and the ability to remember resets were still heavy burdens.
But they were no longer carrying them alone.