UF!Papyrus is worried about his brother, for once...

Sans was late. Again. He had been late to his station to watch for humans, and now he was late coming home! Papyrus had even gone to the trouble of making him some hotcats... but now, when he showed up, he was going to dump them in front of Sans' face.

There was another five minutes of waiting, when Papyrus finally heard the click of the lock in the door. He got up from the couch and put on his most imposing face, crossing his arms and tapping his foot impatiently.

Sans looked up and there was Papyrus. He smiled nervously.

"H-hey, Boss," he tried.

Papyrus merely stared at him for a minute.

"Gah! Why must you always be late? Can't you ever be somewhere on time? I even went through the trouble of making hotcats for you, but now they've gotten cold! You don't deserve them, now. In fact, if you like sleeping so much, why don't you stay out and sleep? I don't want to see you in this house until tomorrow afternoon!"

Sans hung his head shamefully, but could not bring himself to fight back against his brother's words. He never could. He wasn't even surprised at his punishment.

"Don't be so late next time!" Papyrus stalked off and made a show of taking the plate of food and throwing it in the trashcan. Sans looked away; he wasn't hungry, anyways. The last thing he wanted was food. He hadn't been feeling well for the past few days, anyway. He had successfully hidden his sickness from Papyrus quite well, but Sans was sure that if Papyrus caught him coughing, he'd receive a terrible punishment.

He opened the door and eyed the snowy ground; surely if his brothe- uhh, Boss caught him inside, he would get a worse punishment. So he forced himself out into the cold and curled up next to the doorstep, his collar uncomfortably reminding him of his place.

Shivering, Sans slipped into sleep.

The next thing he knew was waking up screaming and everything hurt because he'd just had a nightmare that he didn't remember. And then he was slapped across the face by Papyrus, who was turning blue in the face from yelling at him.

"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU?"

Violently, Sans flinched and backed into the wall of the house, terrified of his brother. He started breathing broken, ragged breaths, and started coughing.

But soon, he started hacking his lungs out (metaphorically) and he didn't notice as Papyrus stopped screaming at him and was now looking at him with concern. Sans started vomiting and coughing blood. He turned to Papyrus, who was now kneeling next to him, but his eye flamed red as he scrambled away from his brother and died down as Sans slipped into unconsciousness.

Sans woke to a white world.

Maybe it wasn't a world. Maybe it was death. He hoped it was. He looked around and there was nothing remarkable about anything. There was nothing. No landmarks, no colors except white, and no noise, no sound...

No silence, either.

How does one live in a world without sound or silence? The opposite of sound is silence. Where did they go? Do they just not exist? Sans grabbed his head in order to stop his out-of-control thoughts.

And then there was a something. The something looked.. exactly like him.

But not.

This weird him was clothed in black and seemed to be the entity of black himself. There were strange words, "Error" glitching in and out of him, and colors and little bits of him would glitch with white rectangles, reversing color where it shouldn't be.

His mouth had yellow teeth and his eyes were outlined in red with a blue pupil. There were tear track streaming down his face. On his hands, tied around his bones, were several pieces of string that led up to nowhere that Edge should see.

Behind this weird Sans was...

Another damn Sans. Fucking Asgore, how many of him were there?

This Sans was decked out in blue and in his eyes shone... stars? He wore blue gloves and a blue scarf, and carried himself with the same sort of confidence that Papyrus had. Maybe a little less... intimidating, but nonetheless, still a Papyrus-sort of confidence. Emanating from his silver shirt was a blue soul, with strings attached to it that disappeared into the endless ceiling.

The two advanced towards Edge, and he scrambled away a few feet before an unseen wall appeared.

"I-I-I can assure you, we'r-r-re not here to hurt you," the Error one said. The Blue one continued hiding behind Error.

"H-how the hell do I k-know that?" Edge said, keeping careful watch on both of them. He hated the stutter in his voice- scared sounding and totally uncool like Error's. #LivingWithTheGreatPapyrus, Edge thought.

"Hey, it's okay," the Blue (Blue something, there was more to that name) Sans said. "Uhm, we... we were watching the m-multiverse... and... we saw you... we thought... maybe, you could use some help?"

Blue was obviously nervous about something, because Edge was sure he didn't normally stutter like that. Maybe he was intimidated by Sans' raw power...

Ha. The Boss always said he'd never had any for anyone to be intimidated by. It had to be something else.

"Help with what? I-I'm just f-fi-fine."

"Y-y-your bro," Error said. "W-w-want me to take him out?"

"You keep your weird-ass hands off my Boss- err, B-Brother," Edge defended.

Error chuckled. "Okay," he said. "Jus if you need any help." He vanished with that weird sort of half-sound mix of when monsters died and Sans took his shortcut. A whisshhhh along with a scritching sound.

Blueberry (there we go) stood looking confused, when the blue strings on his heart tugged- rather painfully, by his expression- and he, too, vanished.

Sans woke again- or had he never woken at all?- in his bed, shivering from the cold, but surprisingly feeling not-as-fatiuged as he usually was. Maybe that endless void had given him some rest. He needed it...

Sans' sockets closed as he drifted into dreamless sleep...

...

. . .

. . . .

. . . . .

. . . . . .

And opened once more as Papyrus kicked open his door, demanding that he 'get up and get to work, as he was being lazy as usual and had even been allowed to sleep in fifteen minutes and at least he was inside last night'. Papyrus's overly loud voice scratched the inside of his skull, giving him a headache and making him feel worse than he already did. Sans risked a look out of his small window and saw that the sun was up and he'd been sleeping for about three more hours.

"Get up, you useless bastard!" Papyrus grabbed the neck of his shirt and hauled him into the air, staring at him and momentarily choking him as Sans clawed at his shirt and struggled in the air.

Papyrus made a disgusted noise and dropped Sans mercilessly onto the floor. "You have fifteen minutes," he said, "Or breakfast is being thrown away." The skeleton stalked out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.

Sans sat dazed on the floor for a moment, then crawled back in bed and tried to not feel sick enough to go to work.

But...

His bed was so comfortable...

And he fell asleep, again.

And, fifteen minutes later, Papyrus came barging in.

And, once more, Papyrus momentarily choked him by holding him by his collar.

But, this time, something went different. Sans's shirt came up enough to see inside his ribcage, containing his soul. It clearly was not the healthy (ish) red colour it should have been, but was instead flickering between different shades of brown and black. Papyrus was so startled by it that he forgot he was temporarily murdering his brother.

The soul began to flicker more towards black than brown, and Papyrus looked at Sans and saw him starting to go limp, so he set him down on the bed and waited for him to regain his senses.

Sans coughed roughly and looked up at him, blood dribbling out of his mouth. "B-Boss? D-did I-I do s-something w-wrong?" He coughed harshly between his stutters in 'something'.

"No," Papyrus said, looking down at him. "But you've gotten sick."

"He... hehe... N-no, I h-haven't..." Sans said, trying to get up to put on work clothes but failed in standing up. He tripped and fell into Papyrus's arms, then flinched back onto the bed, for fear of being hit for showing weakness.

"Yes, you have. I'm going to call Captain Undyne and tell her we're both taking work off until you get better." Papyrus subconsciously pulled the blanket (why does he only have one?) up over his brother and left the room.

"B-boss..." Sans tried to protest, but was asleep before he could get the rest of it out.