A/N: hey so here's this thing i wrote in literally an hour and a half while watching brooklyn nine-nine.

i fucking hate myself

why do i make sans suffer like this?

shit

-oxy

There were days that you sat against the interior of your sentry station with your head against the hard wood, cold ever-present but not bothering you in the slightest.

How were you supposed to feel the frigid weather without veins, or nerves, or skin?

You fell asleep, more often than not.

Timid footsteps crunched past and your left eye burned with magic.

Creeping dread filled your nonexistent stomach, and you stood up to face the child who was trembling with the cold you couldn't feel.

Their hair was wild, as if it'd been pulled back at some point but was let loose. A stained apron was tied around their waist and looped around their neck. They clutched a burnt frying pan in their hands. Their shoes were covered in dust.

But their eyes were wide and teary and frightened, and the magic faded away from your bones.

A kid. A kid walked through that door.

You grit your teeth, the permanent smile growing broader and you hated it. You readied the whoopee cushion in your right hand and steeled yourself.

Time to go to work.

You got a call from Asgore three days later. He'd added a new soul to his collection.

You walked through Hotland to the Core and you passed a stained apron and a burnt frying pan.

Your hands shook.

The next one wore a tutu covered in dust. They had on pink ballet slippers. Just like the apron kid, they were scared. They shuddered in the cold and shuddered when you spoke, their thin leotard crusting with ice.

You tried not to think about it when they made for Snowdin.

You saw Dogamy and Dogaressa pull out their phones to call Undyne.

You sat at the bar at Grillby's and downed an entire bottle of ketchup by yourself in one go. The Royal Guard cheered their success.

Your phone rang a week later - Asgore, again, thanking you for your work. Providing a status update.

You hid the tutu you found lying on the ground behind a waterfall, the shoes lost to the tall grasses.

Sitting and waiting was what you were good at; it was what you liked.

Waiting meant you didn't have to watch kids come and go.

The silence of Snowdin Forest meant that you weren't breaking your promise.

You napped in the snow, and liked to pretend that when that big door opened and closed it didn't sound so much like a funeral bell.

At night, you read Papyrus stories and ignored the way they felt like eulogies.

You sent the kid with the cowboy hat on their way, too.

Your smile felt like a grimace.

When your phone rang two days later, you didn't pick it up.

You remembered the kid with the glasses the most clearly. Maybe it was the way the lenses magnified their eyes. Wide, green, scared.

They clutched a torn-up notebook in their arms and watched the world around them warily.

You hid in your station from them.

Maybe, if you didn't direct this one to Snowdin, they would never get there.

The text you got a week later proved you very wrong.

When you passed Gerson in Waterfall, you saw the glasses twinkling maliciously under the sparkling stones in the ceiling, and the notebook atop the counter threw a shudder through you.

A particularly green stone bounced a reflection through the lenses at you, and you took a shortcut home for the day.

The bandana kid came next, wearing boxing gloves and roguish grin.

You had fewer qualms about this one, and you hated yourself.

But the way they moved around made the dust fall from their clothes and those horrifying gloves, and this time you watched Undyne spear one and you felt nothing.

But you put one glove in a box and you buried the other one in the forest and you still felt like the scum of the earth.

You napped until Papyrus came to get you in the late evening, raving about the call he'd gotten from the King, praising you for your attentiveness and help.

You smiled and nodded and with every word you felt like poison was dripping through your teeth.

Then there was the kid.

The kid in the striped shirt.

They didn't drip with dust.

They smiled at your puns.

They played along with Papyrus's puzzles.

Even when they ran away, they didn't hold hate in their heart for their opponents.

And, wary as you were of the human who flirted with every monster they saw, this once - just this once - you kept your promise.

"Watch over them, and protect them, will you not?"