A few months had passed since the barrier had been broken. Everyone was adjusting to life on the surface and many of the monsters had settled down outside of one of the large cities. It was what the humans had called a "trailer park." Which Sans guessed wasn't exactly ritzy living, but it was difficult enough adjusting to human values, so he was grateful.
It also meant that everyone was close by each other. Sans and Papyrus shared a trailer, Undyne had her own trailer (after it was clear that she was not the type to share space), and Toriel and Frisk had a trailer as well. The mixed human-and-monster school was also near the trailer park, so that was convienent.
Sans was working at a convienence store and also doing some janitorial duties at the new school (at the insistence of Toriel). Surprisingly, it was a good balance – he got to interact with the humans while also keeping an eye (socket) on Frisk. Undyne, too, was working at the school as a gym teacher, which was a good fit.
Papyrus, meanwhile, was honing his cooking techniques. Sans had to begrudgingly admit that his brother was getting better at not burning down the kitchen and was even breaking out of his usual spaghetti.
This particular night in question, however, was not a good night. Papyrus had burned the lasagna he was making; when Sans had come home black smoke had been billowing out of the kitchen window. Once Sans had come in and cleared everything out, he made his way over to the couch, pulled out his phone, and ordered a pizza. Papyrus liked pizza almost as much as he liked spaghetti, so Sans was sure that he'd be thrilled. He looked fairly nervous though.
"pap, what is it?" Sans asked.
"BROTHER, THERE WAS SOMETHING IMPORTANT. WHY I BURNED THE LASAGNA. THERE WAS A HUMAN WHO CAME BY. HE WANTED TO TALK ABOUT YOU, BUT HE MADE ME KINDA NERVOUS."
Sans sat up a bit straighter on the couch. "what stuff was he saying, bro?"
Papyrus walked over to the couch and sat by Sans. "HE SAID IT WAS YOU HE WAS REALLY INTERESTED IN. HE KEPT TALKING ABOUT THINGS I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND."
"papyrus, did he say what his name was?"
"HE SAID HIS NAME WAS 'Q!' WHICH I THOUGHT WAS SILLY, WHO NAMES THEMSELVES AFTER A LETTER ANYWAY?!"
Sans blinked. When he opened his eye sockets, they were empty. Sans was sweating. He reached into his pockets and handed Papyrus a wad of bills. "look, papyrus, when the delivery man gets here, give him the money. i gotta be alone for a little bit."
"SANS!" Papyrus yelled. He pulled Sans up from the couch and hugged him very tightly. "SANS! ARE YOU ANGRY WITH ME BECAUSE I BURNED THE LASAGNA? OR DID YOU KNOW THE 'Q' MAN ALREADY? IS HE BAD?"
"ugh, papyrus, you're going to squish me to death." Papyrus set Sans back down, but still looked at his brother quizzically, expecting an answer to hopefully all of his questions.
Sans just sighed. "listen, I think I got a bone to pick with this 'q.'" He winked and Papyrus groaned loudly.
"but don't worry about it. save some pizza for me and i'll be back soon."
Papyrus let Sans go. Sans walked a couple hundred feet outside the trailer park before teleporting. Papyrus knew Sans could teleport, of course, but Sans was careful not to abuse his power around his brother. As tempting as it may have been to just teleport around Papyrus all the time and drive him completely nuts.
Sans was on top of the hill overlooking the city. He remembered bringing Frisk up here late one night to look at the stars. Of course, he'd heard no end of it from Toriel the next day (getting the kid out of bed on a school night?!), but it had been worth it.
Sans sat down on the grass. He thought of his brother, the Core. Gaster's last words.
At that point, Gaster had been almost gone, swallowed up by the Core. He stood on the edge, right out of Sans' reach.
Sans had squinted to make out the symbols in the heat.
"one last thing."
"do not speak to the creature who calls himself q. the man who is not a man. powerful. be careful. he may find you."
Sans tried to ask Gaster what he could mean, but gave up. It was the end.
"sans. maybe someday you will forgive me."
Sans woke up then, of course. And Gaster had never existed.
For some time after the timeline had been altered, Sans had asked many of the monsters underground about the 'Q'. He wrote all of his speculations in a notebook. But finding nothing out, he eventually gave up his quest.
The only monster Sans hadn't mentioned Q to was Papyrus.
The fact that Papyrus had met Q gave Sans a chill.
"the man who is not a man. powerful."
gaster, what did you mean? why now?
A bright flash of light interrupted Sans' train of thought. He stood up.
A man stood before him, towering above the skeleton. It wasn't a hard feat, since Sans was only five feet tall, but there was an air of dominance surrounding the man.
Sans squinted. The man was wearing a blue jacket, white tank top, black shorts, slippers... Sans looked down at his own slippers.
is he.. is he mocking me?
"Greetings! Sans! We meet at last!" The man bowed flamboyantly. "One judge meets another!" He then straightened himself out and shrugged. "Hey, this is actually pretty comfortable. Especially the slippers. Not that either of us need shoes for walking..."
Any light in Sans' eyes went out. He stood silent, avoiding Q's gaze.
Q, unused to being ignored, frowned. He teleported behind Sans, grabbing him by the shoulders. "Hey now, nothing to be afraid of! You should be honored that I'm paying you a visit."
Somehow, Sans felt the opposite of honored. "my brother told me not to talk to you."
"Your brother? Well, your brother was very nice to me! Very dense, and a bit dull to be honest -" Sans winced - "but I'm fairly certain he wouldn't hurt a fly." Q paused, teleporting again, his back now facing Sans. "Ah, I understand. Your brother."
he knows. of course he knows.
"I told him not to tinker with the Core. Tsk, tsk. He was going too far. But you know what they say. Humans are so stubborn. And so are monsters, I suppose."
Sans could not hold himself back this time. He felt his right eye burning blue, and teleported directly in front of Q. "you know nothing about my brother."
"I know more about your brother than you think. In fact, I know everything! I'm just curious about you." He took several steps toward Sans, apparently not intimidated. Sans clenched his fists. Q shook his head. "You have so much power. You could have everything you ever wanted! Yet here you are, letting that idiot Papyrus annoy you and looking after that little snot-rag Frisk. You're pathetic!"
Sans unclenched his right fist and blue light poured from his bony fingers, splitting open the earth. Sans momentarily glimpsed a look of shock cross Q's face before white light engulfed everything around him.
Sans was standing in a vast field of white nothingness. He saw a figure approaching him. It was Q, of course. Instead of wearing Sans' outfit, however, he was wearing long white robes. Q looked positively god-like. Which of course was the look he was aiming for.
Rage and confusion built up in Sans. "what are you doing?" he demanded. "what do you want?"
"Why, I've already told you. I think you're very interesting. And by the way," Q awkwardly scratched his head, "I take back the part about you being pathetic. That was a rather powerful bit of magic."
"what makes me interesting to you? i've made sacrifices. i've done what i've needed to. we're on the surface now, and things will get better."
"Sacrifices? To what end? My friend Sans, I think you're lying to yourself! You've forgotten who you are. I'm just taking the liberty to help you remember." Q snapped his fingers and they were overlooking the Core.
"why did you take me here?" Sans could feel his eyes welling up with tears. The heat and the overwhelming memories of this place were almost too much to bear.
"I'm trying to help you see that this is where you died. After this, you threw all your work away. Hid the rest in a room. Spending all your time sleeping, selling hot dogs, and killing the occasional human or two. What a waste."
Sans felt his eye flaring up. how could he know about the other humans? only undyne and asgore knew about that...
"Don't give me that look," Q said. "When will you understand that I know everything? You cant' keep any secrets from me." Q gave another glance to Sans' flaring eye. "Also, don't try anything funny in here. You might blow both of us up."
Sans said nothing. He felt himself desperately wishing he was at home, eating pizza with Papyrus.
Actually, why couldn't he put an end to this?
Sans closed his eyes and teleported back a hundred or so feet in front the trailer park. He'd barely taken in the night air before he felt himself being pulled back to the Core. He found himself face to face with Q again.
"Oh, no. We're not quite done here yet."
"what do you want from me?" Sans remembered playing a game with Gaster once. What had it been called? Chess. They'd reached a point when they couldn't play anymore; both their pieces had been positioned equally. What was the term?
stalemate.
Q crouched close to Sans. "I am wondering," he said, "what you would do to bring Gaster back."
"i can't," Sans replied automatically. All those countless hours spent, trying to fix the machine. It was impossible in the end.
"I can. Or I wouldn't be asking you this right now."
Sans shook his head. "what's in it for you? you don't seem to be the... charitable type."
Q shrugged. "I'm just curious. As always, I suppose. It is the one thing I do have in common with the humans. But this is some rather stressful scenery, isn't it?" He swept his arms around. "Let's go somewhere more... ambiant."
Another flash of light, and they were in the echo flower forest under the "stars."
This was probably Sans' least favorite place in all of the Underground.
Q stood beside him, seemingly oblivious to Sans' discomfort. "So. This is the ultimate wish. What will you choose?"
The echo flowers murmured around them, repeating Q's words.
Sans thought of the times he had come here and had wished that Gaster could come back. Until he realized what a futile wish it truly was. As for the most common wish to see the surface again, in the end he'd helped make it come true. Though truthfully not in the way he had imagined.
As for Gaster, if Q stopped the madness that led to Gaster's non-existence, maybe things would be whole again. Sans wouldn't have all those night terrors about the alternate timelines, and he'd have his partner back.
But the implications of this made Sans uneasy.
"no," Sans finally said. The echo flowers murmured back. He thought they sounded surprised, though he could have been imagining it.
"What?!" Q said in disbelief.
"i have my regrets. but the kid... probably wouldn't survive if Gaster was still around. for a lot of reasons. and we're at peace with the humans. it's uneasy but we'll work through it." Sans turned to face Q, his eye and hand blazing with blue fire again. "now if you're done taunting me, i'd like to go back home now."
"I was just asking out of politeness, you know. I think you've underestimated my power. I can do whatever I want here, and you can't stop me." Q grinned maliciously.
Sans was filled with rage. He blasted blue light toward Q but Q teleported behind him. "you're worse than that stupid flower!"
"I agree."
Both Sans and Q turned around to see a familiar, smiling flower nestled in with the other echo flowers.
"Golly!" it said. "I never thought I'd meet someone crueler than me!"
Q stomped over to Flowey and ripped him out of the ground. "Hey! Let go of me!"
"I didn't come to this dimension to play head-games with a flower!" Q yelled.
Flowey looked miserable but also very angry. "You won't kill me. You know who I really am. And you'll have to kill me first if you want to get to Gaster." The flower blinked and continued. "You've crossed the line, Q."
Q looked, for the first time perhaps in centuries, confused. "I thought you wanted to kill everything. Instead you're being such a buzzkill. Shame."
He walked away from both Sans and Flowey. Looking at Sans one last time, he said, "Your font suggested you'd be a lot of fun. Well, I guess we can't always take appearances for the true thing, can we? Perhaps we will meet again." He snapped his fingers and there was one last flash of white light.
Sans was standing back on the hill on the surface, alone. No Q, no Flowey.
i'll be damned. that flower was good for something after all.
Sans teleported back down to the trailer park. Papyrus was in the kitchen, eating pizza. "BROTHER! YOU HAVE RETURNED FROM YOUR WALK!"
"my...walk?"
"YOU SAID YOU NEEDED SOME FRESH AIR. WAS IT HELPFUL?"
he's forgotten. or maybe it never happened. "oh yeah. didn't walk too far of course. i -" Sans' emotions got the better of him. He walked over to Papyrus and gave him a very tight hug. "pap, have i ever told you that you're the best brother ever?"
"SANS! THIS ISN'T A LEAD-UP INTO ANOTHER PUN, IS IT?!"
"nope. just want to make sure you know that you're awesome. don't change, okay?"
"WELL SANS, THAT IS VERY NICE OF YOU!" Papyrus went to sit back down at the table and there was a farting noise as he sat on a whoopee cushion. "SANSSSSS!"
There was a knock at the door and then a slamming noise as Undyne kicked the front door down. "Did I hear the pizza man come by here?! There better be some for me!" She walked over to Sans and Papyrus and noogied them. "UNDYNEEE!" Papyrus yelled.
After school the next day, Sans took Frisk out for nice cream (the Nice Cream Man had settled in the trailer park as well). Frisk mumbled something about how Sans seemed to be in a good mood.
well, having all your nightmares revealed before your eyes and then having a second chance could do that to you.
Of course, he didn't say that to Frisk. They were too young to understand yet. Maybe he could explain to them someday.
"i've just realized that i'm really glad how things turned out in the end. meeting you, kid... probably one of the best things to happen to me in a long, long time. for all of us. stay determined, okay?" He rustled Frisk's hair. Frisk grimaced.
"oh come on, i know you love it." Sans winked.
Later that evening, Sans went to his lab and was organizing some of his notes. He threw the notebook on Q in the trash.
"huh?" one of the blueprints had a sticky note on it in an unfamiliar hand. "This formula might contain the solutions to some of your problems," it said, and was accompanied by a complicated-looking mathmatical equation. It was signed "Q."
Sans threw that in the trash too.
to everything there is a season, he thought, and we'll make it through this one without the help of a god.