A/N: Hey again, guys! I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that gave me feedback, here and on Tumblr! I live off that kind of thing. Also, because I am the human embodiment of anxiety and awkwardness, I'm not going to PM you, so I'll just thank you up here...where it's safe.

Also, I realize that there were some inconsistencies with the last chapter, and I fixed those. I went headcannoning, and it didn't seem to go over well. And I, uh, conviniently forgot that Monsters don't bleed. Regardless, enjoy! Feedback is like a drug. You should hook me up.


The second time he meets them, he almost kills them on principal. They don't see the razor-sharpened bones that float, hidden, in the dark woods around them, but trust him, they're there.

He checks the ruins to find no scorch marks, checks the child's footsteps to find no dust between the imprints.

He follows them, watches them until they reach his brother's gate. They seem...small. Nervous. In awe at the cavern's ceiling. Determined, but not in the way the other kid had been. This one's—dare he say it—kind.

When he speaks, the child turns around before they're supposed to, which is weird, but they answer with a happy hello and seem more than eager to shake his hand.

He notices a trace amount of dust under their fingernails when they set off the whoopie cushion. His eyes flick to theirs, and they retract their hand to hide it in the folds of their sweater.

This kid, except for the dust, is nice, and fun, and all those other things they weren't before. They play with Papyrus, shocking themselves on purpose so he gets a kick out of it. They genuinely laugh at all his bad puns, hurl a not-so-discreet snowball at his back when he's not looking, eat snow until their fingers redden and proclaim how different it is from the stuff on the surface.

There's no trail of dust and discarded items.

There's no red scarf in the snow, no forgotten armor.

He keeps his promise to the jokester from the ruins and keeps a watchful eye socket on the kid as they journey through the Underground. He watches as they face off against Woshua, stay polite and cheerful around Onionsan, hug Alphys and best Mettaton by giving him the highest ratings Underground TV has ever fucking seen. Never once do they kill, never once do they carry anything other than a stick.

It's so...different. They're different. It's unnerving.

He takes the kid to dinner, gets 'em a popcorn shrimp basket, pours himself a tall glass of ketchup, and they sit. Make small talk, bad puns, the works. All throughout, the human gets more and more uncomfortable.

"Hey, S-Sans," they stutter, looking down at their plate. Their face is a weird red color—is it supposed to do that?

"Yeah, kid?"

He gives them a moment to gather themselves, to prepare for whatever grandiose statement they have to throw at him.

"I-uh...I…" they stammer.

He holds up a hand. "Whatever's gotcha all up in a knot, buddy—"

"Sans-about...about the dust—"

"Hey," he says, and the kid only stops when the room flashes blue for a second. "Let's wait on that, a'ight? We'll talk about it, but not here. You'll get judged soon enough. "

At the look of sudden panic on the humans' face, he laughs. "Hey, amigo, I'm just jokin'. Don't worry about it. But yeah no, we'll talk about it later, okay? Let's just eat. Enjoy our time, you know. All that fun stuff."

The human had calmed down after that, but Sans left disturbed. There was dust, old dust, in their nails, on their palms, smudging everything they touched with just a little.

That, and well, he'd just told a blatant lie. This kid is gonna get judged, and no amount of frustrating cuteness or kindness is going to change that.

This is the kid that killed/spared his brother, for fuck's sake.

So Sans goes to the hall. And he waits. And waits, and waits. Takes a nap or two, spins his bones in lazy circles just to see the room light up a nonthreatening blue. It's not the funnest thing ever, but it's alright.

He waits until the child shows up, bedraggled and bruised, eyes haunted in an eerily familiar way. When they see him, standing there like the goddamn angel of death at the end of the hall, their face breaks out into a smile and they run over, clutching him into a hug.

He doesn't jerk away, but he doesn't embrace them, either. He just pats them on the back while the kid goes on about, for some heartbreaking reason, the Queen's dead kids. He lets them talk themselves out, nodding in the right places but not paying attention. This is a story he knows well.

"S-sans, it was…"

"Yeah, kiddo, I know. It sucks. And I'm sorry, I really am, but it's about to suck even more." As he speaks, he pulls himself out of the kid's grasp and turns away. His footsteps echo on the marble floor as he walks a reasonable distance before turning back, slow and deliberate.

"Sans?" The kid's confused, looking up at him with bright, sad eyes. The skeleton sighs.

"Look, kid, this isn't gonna be fun. I know it's not," Sans says, pinching the bridge of his nose, "but I need ya to tell me about the dust on your hands."

The kid looks away. "Oh."

"Well?"

They stall, staring at their hands. "I-I can't tell you how many times I've washed these things," they say, their voice rising with giggles-they're almost hysterical. "It was a...Froggit, in th-the Ruins. T-Toriel had left, I didn't know what to do, Sans, I was so scared a-and I hadn't saved, I didn't know I could, and it k-kept jumping, and I j-j-just…" they cover their eyes with the heels of their hands and cry, the sobs echoing around the room.

Sans didn't move, didn't breathe. The kid continued to cry.

Finally, after minutes of waiting, the kid cries themselves out, and in a shaky, exhausted voice, speaks again.

"Do you know how many times I've washed these things?" They say again, and hold their palms out to him for a moment before letting their arms fall limply to their side. "It doesn't come off. Undyne…" they look away again, towards the window. "She saw my hands, and tried to kill me. Came at me screaming, asking if I liked it when people didn't come home." They clutch their stomach and give a single, dry sob. "I feel my sins. They're crawling on my back, Sans."

"Oh, jeez, kid," he breathes. "Where'd you learn that phrase?"

The human jerks their head up, eyes wide, and then looks away again, shamefaced. "When I found a knife in the Ruins. It made me sick. When Mom told me to never come back. When you asked me to shake your hand, when your brother took me on a date, when Undyne...well. But this whole time, anytime anything happens, I hear it. 'You feel your sins crawling on your back.' And I do. They're so heavy."

This wasn't the kid that had killed everyone he loved, Sans realizes. This is a child scared and confused, who had been attacked from every direction ever since falling down this godforsaken hole for whatever reason.

Sans steps forward, slippered feet smacking against the marble as he walks to stand in front of the tiny human. "Kid."

They don't answer.

He grabs their chin and gently pulls their face up. They stare over his shoulder, eyebrows knit and eyes red.

"Kid, I wouldn't normally say this, but…" The skeleton sighs, letting go of their chin and looking at the ground between their feet. "You can...fix this. It was a mistake, a...ah, shit, kid, you were scared. Jus'—do you wanna—" He stops, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand. He'd never tried to explain a reset before, much less encourage it. He'd never had reason to do anything other than prevent it

"What?"

"Do you want...a do-over? A second chance?"

The hope that cracks over the kid's face breaks his fuckin' heart. Because of course they do—with what they just told him, they'd do anything to get that weight off their back.

The child doesn't say anything, just stares at him with those huge, pleading eyes. He sighs, letting the wave of guilt come crashing down. He'd just signed a death sentence to the whole Underground. Like, two-hundred-fifty-four-tuple suicide, all for a kid that's killed/spared them all anyways.

Well, nobody ever said he was smart for a skeleton. Just lazy. Just Sans, good with puns and a whoopie cushion.

He takes a deep breath, looks the kid up and down.

"Well," he says, letting it hang in the air between them.. "Do ya want it or not?"


Death this time was not something he expected, but when it comes he's holding a small, battered soul in the palm of one hand, letting the little red thing warm him from the inside out. It's a moment of panic when the world starts to unravel like so much thread before the static of the universe comes crashing in and he knows nothing, nothing but the blackness

—and the white of Snowdin, and the walking cacophony that is his brother, and exactly two days before the human arrives.

Sans blinks away the glare, feeling something akin to fire heat him from his soul outwards, the echo of what had/never been sounding from the trees, the cavernous ceiling, the ground beneath his feet:

"Jus' make it better this time, yeah? No killin' anyone. Jus' be happy, be the kid we all love."

"I promise."