Remedy

Chapter 2: Sickness

...

I took an experimental breath and was relieved at how easily it came.

Well, now I was back in the Underground. Time to save the world…again. I met Flowey and Toriel and Sans, who was dutifully following the script. I played along, keenly aware of the hidden cameras and the fact that Alphys was recording everything. She would be going over every word, gesture, and expression in detail before I met her, so it was important to play my part perfectly.

It was kind of fun.

At one point, when we reached a blind-spot in the cameras, I gave Sans a covert wink, and he rolled his eyes. He seemed…content. Not happy, but that was to be expected. Sans was usually quite hard to read. He kept his despair hidden, mostly for Papyrus's sake. But I'd become fairly good at reading his moods, and he hadn't sunk into melancholy as I feared he might.

He still had hope.

And I was Determined to keep it that way.

I rushed through the Underground as quickly as possible and I broke the barrier.

Standing on the cliff, watching the sunset, I looked to Sans, who smiled back at me. My death was a mistake. We'd lost time, but we could get it back. This time would be different. This time would be perfect.

When Asgore offered me the position of Ambassador, I hesitated before declining. He looked so sad at my refusal, but I hugged him tightly and said that I was too young. The humans would not respect me or listen to me. Maybe when I was older, it would be different. I only wanted what was best for them.

Asgore accepted this gracefully, and Papyrus was more than happy to take my place. Sans disappeared somewhere, and I agreed to move in with Toriel. She enrolled me in school, and opened the doors to both humans and monsters so I wouldn't feel alone.

Life was good.

I had a bright future stretching out before me.

Eight months later, I fell sick….

I awoke with the golden sunlight streaming down and I spent a good long minute just marveling at my ability to breathe. It had been pretty terrible near the end, as if I was lingering constantly on the edge of suffocation. By the time Sans came to visit me, I could hardly speak at all, but he didn't listen to my halting offers this time either. Instead he pushed my soul back into my body, albeit more gently this time, and said that he would see me again the next time around.

I raced through the ruins this time. Sans met me on the other side. He was…troubled. I could hear it in the lilt of his lazy voice and the rote way he said his jokes. But he still smiled at me, and I continued on. We made it to the surface, and I agreed to become the Ambassador. During the last loop, one of the children at school had become ill, and I had caught the same bug. Also, school was actually harder to skip than officially sanctioned meetings. Who knew? So the position of Ambassador was safer. I'd just have to avoid the sick diplomat this time around. Easy. No problem. No problem at all.

I kept my eye on Sans. He'd fallen back into his lazier ways, and that worried me somewhat. Even at his liveliest, he'd never been particularly pro-active about doing things, but these days it could be difficult to get him out of bed. And he was always sleeping on the job.

"Sans, it will be alright this time," I said one day. We were lying on a grassy hill and cloud watching. It was the height of summer, and the sweltering heat made me sleepy. Sans was already dozing, but his eyes cracked open at my words.

"yeah, kid," he said.

I don't think he believed me.

Five months later, I fell sick….

I told Toriel that I had places to be.

It was a lie, and I couldn't meet her tearful gaze when she hugged me. She'd lost so many children, and it hurt to lose me too. I choked back a sob as I left, but it was for the best. Maybe there was something about the monster city that was making me ill. Maybe the lack of diseases was actually weakening my immune system. Maybe I just needed to be around other humans, as much as I didn't want to. I'd make my way in the world…somehow.

Sans stopped me before I could disappear into the night.

"kid, take care of yourself, alright?" he said. He sounded uncertain, as though he were debating whether or not to stop me.

I smiled and hoped it would be enough to convince him that I knew what I was doing.

Or maybe I was trying to convince myself.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," I said.

I left him standing there.

Two months later, I fell sick….

I wept tears of joy when I woke to the golden sunlight of the Underground. I would never, ever leave Toriel again. Living on the streets was horrific. I was always hungry, cold, and scared. I begged for food on the streets and scavenged supplies from dumpsters. People looked down their noses at me when they weren't kicking me out of the way. They treated me like I was dirt, like I was nothing.

I cried into my makeshift pillow at night, wishing for my warm bed, my friends, and my family. Falling sick was almost a relief. With no one here to care for me, I didn't even last very long. My last memory before death was of a fever dream where Sans held me curled up in his lap and apologized for not coming to get me sooner. I tried to tell him that it wasn't his fault, but I couldn't catch my breath. He looked so sad.

When I met Toriel after waking, I threw myself into her arms and sobbed for several long minutes. She did not understand my distress or my unusually trusting nature, but she knew a suffering child when she saw one, and she embraced me with warm arms. She spoke soothingly until I was ready to go on, and she didn't seem surprised at all when I asked to call her Mom.

I lingered in the ruins this time, but only for a few days. I wasn't in the best state of mind, but I had obligations to uphold. The first and foremost was saving all of the monsters in the Underground. Sans was more resigned this time with an undercurrent of worry. It took until reaching Snowdin before I realized he was worried about me.

I wanted to reassure him. But there were precious few places where we could talk, so I resolved to speak with him when we reached the surface.

That proved more difficult than usual.

I'm not sure if it was the lingering effects of prolonged homelessness or if I was subconsciously unwilling to leave the Underground, but I kept dying. I kept dying a lot.

It became so bad that during my fight with Undyne, Sans actually left his hot dog stand and distracted Undyne deliberately rather than waiting for her to scold him for sleeping on the job. I made my escape and gave her the water when she collapsed. I died a dozen times while fighting Muffet because I'd forgotten to buy a spider donut in the ruins, and I wasn't used to her attacks. And I died fighting Mettaton because the bright lights gave me flashbacks to a lightning storm I'd endured while hiding under a piece of soaked cardboard. It was one of my lowest moments.

By the time I reached the Judgement Hall, I was a nervous wreck. When Sans stepped out to meet me, I collapsed into his arms and cried, blubbering incoherently about storms and death and soul-crushing loneliness. He sighed and pulled me through one of his shortcuts to his room. He sat me down on his mattress and held me while I pulled myself together. It took a long time. Thankfully, Sans was patient.

I stayed in his room that night. I was in no shape to fight Asgore or Flowey. The next day, Sans said that I wasn't ready to leave. I agreed. So I stayed another night. And another.

Sans and Papyrus were good roommates. Sans told me jokes whenever I jumped at sudden noises, and Papyrus made me endless plates of spaghetti. We played junior jumble and went on friend-dates.

I thought about asking Sans if I could stay here forever, but I sometimes caught him looking off into the distance with sad eyes, and I knew he wanted to return to the surface. It wasn't just him, either. I could see it in the faces of the monsters in Snowdin, and hear it in their conversations. The surface was a nearly mythical place where all of their hopes and dreams would come true. When Papyrus took me on a walk through Waterfall, I listened to the echo flowers. Their desperate wishes filled me with Determination. So, after two weeks of living with the brothers, I asked Sans to take me back to the castle.

He gave me a long look before leading the way.

I broke the barrier.

Standing on the cliff, I felt a wave of dread. I agreed to become the Ambassador. I agreed to live with Toriel. I told Sans that it would be different this time.

Somehow, it would be different.

Two days later, I fell sick….

"It's not natural," I insisted. We were sitting in his workshop with the strange, broken device. As far as Alphys knew, I was trapped in the garage. I guessed that I had a few hours before anyone noticed I was missing. "It can't be. I didn't even meet a single human the last time around. And I never got sick that early before!"

Sans was tinkering on the device.

"I have a theory," he said. "my data suggests that there might be a…compounding effect across loops."

"Compounding?" I asked. "Do you mean like how sometimes people know things across loops? Like how Mom remembers whether I preferred cinnamon or butterscotch even if I load a save?"

"yep," said Sans. "but it's only bits and pieces. few people keep all information."

"I do," I said, thinking. "You do, too. So, if there is…compounding, then it would be worse for me. Because I got sick in one timeline, now I'm getting sick in all of them?"

"hmm, maybe," said Sans. "I'd be willing to bet that the illnesses you contracted during the other loops were not lethal. they might have been things that your body would normally have fought off, but because of the compounding, you ultimately died."

I hung my head.

That was the worst case scenario. I couldn't exactly undo loops. Resets obviously wouldn't help either.

"It's worse every loop," I said. "It hurts more. I get sick sooner. In a few loops, I'll probably drop dead the moment I step across the barrier."

I waited for Sans to lighten the mood by cracking a joke.

"two more loops," he confirmed.

We sat in silence while he worked. There was one way around my inevitable death, but I was reluctant to say it.

I only died on the surface.

If I stayed in the Underground, if I refused to break the barrier, I could live.

I could live with the constant reminder of my broken potential. I could watch Sans slowly lose what remained of his hope. He had little enough of it left as it was. How long would it be before he gave up again? A year? Two years? Ten?

I didn't want to watch the slow decay of his dreams for a future.

"Two loops," I said. "So, that means that we'll have a bit of time after this one, right? I'll refuse to be the Ambassador. I'll tell Mom that I have places to be. We'll meet by the lake at the base of the hill, and you'll take my Determination. I won't last very long, but I—"

Sans slammed his hand down on the table, making me jump. His eye was blazing bright blue, and I'd never seen him look so…furious.

"Stop," he said, and his voice was as deadly serious as the first time we'd had this conversation. "Stop trying to throw your life away. Don't you know how much you mean to us? Don't you care how much everyone would hurt to see you die? You don't remember your first death. You were in a coma for three days. T. o. r. i. n. e. v. e. r. s. t. o. p. p. e. d. c. r. y. i. n. g."

I shivered at his words, and then he turned his back to me. His movements were abrupt, as if he was holding himself back from hitting something, probably me.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "But I'm going to die, Sans. That's the truth of it. I'm going to die, and I want the people I care about to have the lives they always dreamed of."

Sans stopped working.

"you don't see yourself in their lives?" he asked. Thankfully, his scary tone was gone. But he sounded sad. "you don't see yourself with Tori or Pap or…me?"

I looked away.

"I want to live," I said. It felt like a confession, and a selfish one at that.

Sans clapped his hand on my shoulder, making me jump.

"well, we'll see what we can do then, alright?" he said, grinning. I could see the strain in his features, and I touched his hand. He squeezed my shoulder before going back to the machine. "I've been working on this for…a while. I've been able to transfer the work across loops, but now I'm ready to test it out."

I moved to stand beside him.

"What does it do?" I asked.

"maybe nothing, maybe something," he said. "let's test it out and see what we get."

He threw the master switch, and the whole machine lit up like a Christmas tree. I watched the screens go live, producing data. Sans was tense, and I held his hand. He didn't take his eyes off of the readout and adjusted knobs to keep the machine steady.

It began so shake, and I wondered if it was about to blow up. But my fears were put to rest. After a minute of shuddering, the machine ground to a halt, and the door on one side slid open. There was darkness inside, and the readouts were steady.

Sans stepped to the door and peered at the blackness within.

"What is that?" I asked, awed.

"maybe…a way to solve our problems," said Sans. "alright, kid, what we're about to do is dangerous. the last person to try was scattered across space and time. I won't blame you if you want to stay behind, but I'm not sure if I can do this without you."

He held out his hand.

'Scattered across space and time' sounded unpleasantly permanent. But I'd been prepared to die for the sake of my friends. I could do it for a chance at life.

I took his hand.

And we stepped into the darkness together.

…

To be continued…