Sans shook the pocket watch and listened for the rattle of loose mechanisms. Nothing. He stared hard at the number. 0291.
He made a conscious effort to steady his breathing. It was just a number, he told himself. It didn't mean anything to him, just to the kid. The train of thought crashed into a quagmire of fear.
what does it mean to the kid, then?
"Are you just going to stand there?"
Sans looked up and his soul leapt into his throat. The child was standing five feet in front of him.
Sans teleported into another shadow and checked himself for injuries. There were none. He peeked out to get a glimpse, and the child was staring straight at him.
The kid silently padded forward on bare feet and swung the knife by the wooden hilt like a pendulum.
Sans held his breath and stepped out. He did his best to look threatening, but came across feeling like a scarecrow before a condor.
"seems like we've been through this a few times. by the look on your face, i'd guess we're nearing the three hundred mark."
The child gave an indulgent smile. "You're a perceptive guy, Sans." He took another step forward. "Hey, would you mind checking your watch for me? I'm curious what time it is."
Sans willed his Gaster blasters into existence and seared the hallway with beams of white.
The child dodged like a lazy dancer, spending the bare-minimum energy to shift or bend out of the way.
Scorch marks painted the ceiling, pillars, and floor, but the kid stood with a bored slant to his shoulders, completely unharmed.
"you've been practicing," Sans observed.
The child lobbed the knife across the room to land beside Sans' slippers. "Here."
Sans hastily kicked the knife behind a pillar. "too many failures, then? you finally giving up?" He began to sweat when he detected the panic in his own voice.
The child's smirk bubbled into a chuckle and then boiled over into great, heaving laughter. He hunched his shoulders and clutched at his stomach as his back shook.
Sans was rooted to the tile.
The child eventually righted himself and wiped stray tears from his red eyes. "A comedian to the very end. You always knew how to get a rise out of me."
The kid clenched his hands like claws and approached. "Try to keep me entertained this time."
Sans woke in a standing position. His bones ached and a burning fatigue permeated his soul.
He tried to piece together the fragments of the fight. He'd used the last of his magic to slam the kid around. Had he done it? Was he past the loop? His thoughts hitched. Was the kid dead?
Sans patted himself down, looking for the watch. His hands grew faster and more desperate as all his pockets came up empty. A small voice behind him spoke.
"Oh four one six."
Sans spun around and nearly toppled. His magic was spent and his body barely responded.
The kid was sitting behind him with his back resting against a pillar. He held Sans' pocket watch and was trying to pry the metal seams apart with the knife.
"You're a heavy sleeper. I'd say you've been out for at least nine hours."
Sans scanned the hall and tried to absorb the situation. It had been ravaged by the battle. Most of the windows were shattered and a fallen pillar had collapsed part of the ceiling. He tried to reach out towards his watch, but his arms were so heavy he could have sworn his jacket was made of lead.
The child dropped the watch with disgust and it clattered onto the tile. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could find a blowtorch, would you?"
Sans ground his teeth and said nothing.
The kid rose to face Sans. Purple weariness pooled beneath his eyes, but he was smiling. "Never-mind that. Who's Gaster, anyways? You mention him sometimes near the end, but I never get a straight answer. Was he someone I met on the way down here? Like Pap?"
Sans scraped the remnants of his magic together, summoned a blaster, and fired.
The kid was leaping to the side almost before it appeared. "Ha! Not this time." He closed in and tackled Sans to the ground, almost playfully. He sat cross-legged on Sans' chest and beamed down at him. "For some reason, it didn't occur to me that you'd wake up. I always put you down after you dozed off as a matter of course. But I like the idea of having a post-battle chat."
Sans started to struggle, but gave up. There was no denying it, even without the child on top of him he wouldn't have been able to stand. "welp, you got me, kid. i'm not going anywhere." His eyes grew hollow with contempt. "but what makes you think i'd chat with a murderer like you?"
The child shrugged his shoulders and twirled the knife. "I dunno. Boredom? You've got the watch; you know how many times this has played out."
Sans dearly wished he had the ability to spit in the kid's face. "well that's a surprise. i suppose even psychotic butchers get tired of the same routine."
The child absently carved a pattern into Sans' coat like he was an old tree stump. It didn't pierce to the bone, but it brought a few beads of sweat to Sans' skull.
"There's just not a whole lot else on my calendar." The kid counted on his fingers with the flat of the blade. "Without Flowey, Undyne, or Pap, I don't have a lot of conversation partners."
"burn in hell."
"Good talk."
The knife plunged straight for Sans' eye socket.
