Sans had met the door lady while on patrol. That was the official story, the story he'd told the first few times he'd tried to explain the events to them. In truth, he'd been looking for someone, someone he only half-remembered. When he couldn't find them, he had kept on walking. The door had been just another landmark at first, somewhere to rest his tired bones for a minute. He'd sat down on the stones around the door, resting his skull against it with an audible thunk. It had been a nice thunk, one that had interested him enough to knock his knuckles against it. Some doors aren't fit for knock-knock jokes, but this one was perfect, especially because no one was sighing over the sound of the knock loud enough to interrupt.

So, the knock-knock jokes were inevitable from the start, as was his quiet laughter at his own wordplay. The only thing he hadn't expected was the woman's voice, soft as silk and as deep as distant thunder. She had asked "Who is there?" with the hopeful expectation of a child and he hadn't been able to disappoint her.

"dishes."

"Dishes who?"

"dishes a very bad joke." It most definitely wasn't his best joke, and he had waited anxiously to hear her reply. The momentary silence had been broken by a loud snort, then a spat of bleating laughter. The door had rattled slightly as if she had fallen against it. "geez, lady, that wasn't even my best one. don't hurt yourself."

"Sorry!" the voice had gasped merrily. "It is just- you have no idea how long it has been since I have heard a good knock-knock joke! Oh, here! I have one for you!" She knocked on the door twice.

"who's there?" he asked, hoping for a really good joke. If she was just interested in the 'interrupting' vein of jokes, he'd switch off his interest. Some of those could get really bizarre.

"Little old lady!"

He raised an eye ridge, shifting around until his cheekbone rested on the purple wood. "little old lady who?"

"Oh!" she said, sounding quite shocked. "I did not know you could yodel!" Then she lost it, laughing almost hysterically as she bleated "That is a wonderful talent you have!"

He burst into laughter, grinning up at the cavern ceiling. When his sides started to hurt and her giggling had turned into a happy silence, he had volunteered "knock knock."

"Who is there?"

"peas."

"Peas who?"

"peas to meet you, lady."

"Peas to meet you too, sir!" she choked and then they were off again. When they had fallen into companionable silence and he finally managed to stop laughing long enough to stand up, they said their farewells. He had gone back to his sentry station and grinned through the entire day. Maybe he hadn't found who he was looking for, but he found someone just as good.

So began a wonderful friendship. He would sneak away from guard duty every few days to talk to the lady at the door. She called him 'sir,' he called her 'lady,' and neither of them ever volunteered any more information about themselves. Sometimes, though, he'd tell her about Papyrus. He'd tell her how his brother was doing, of his latest hijinks. She'd tell him stories about years gone past or snail facts. As far as he could gather, she was much older than he was and she acted like Alphys's mom, always making sure he was safe, was happy, was well-fed. She groaned when she heard about his eating habits and scolded him half-heartedly about the nutritional value of grease, while he made puns about bad taste.

No matter the topic of conversation, he could slip a pun or three or five in and to his delight, she started volunteering her own jokes. At first, she had no sense of timing, but he laughed anyway. After all, if he hadn't been encouraged to continue, he might have never grown to become the sansational comedian he was today.

The door lady got better at her jokes until they were both in stitches after each one. He would say his goodbyes and laugh through the whole day at his guard station, befuddling Undyne and concerning Papyrus.

Unfortunately, this phase couldn't last. One day, he ambled to the door, bursting with new jokes to tell her, and started cracking them out one after the other. She laughed, but not the kind of laugh he was looking for, as if she was distracted, and asked him questions about how he was doing between each one. When he'd confessed to a cold, her voice had become stern. "What are you doing out here when you should be at home in bed?"

"doing my job, what else?"

"You could catch a chill! Gracious! When you go home tonight, make yourself some soup, then go to bed. A cold is nothing to sneeze at!" She had tittered at her pun and Sans had laughed too, saying jokingly "yeah, okay, mom."

All sound ceased on her side of the door. "lady?" he asked. "lady, what's up?" He heard a breath hitch in her throat, as if she was about to cry, and, horrified, he pressed his skull to the door as if he could just fall through to her. "lady?" he tried again.

This time, she answered. "If a human ever comes through this door, could you please, please promise something?" He waited as she gathered herself. "Watch over them, and protect them, will you not?"

He hadn't answered. He had kept quiet so long that she had started to shift, uncomfortable about asking. This woman wasn't the type to ask for anything. She commanded sometimes, and he would tease her about it, but she never asked. What she wasn't able to get, she had told him once, she went without. He didn't even know her name, but he knew so much else. He knew that she wanted to be a teacher because once she had brought a few books down to the door and read to him her favorite facts. He knew that she practiced fire magic and she loved baking. And he knew that she loved awful, terrible, really bad jokes with all her heart.

"lady, i hate making promises."

And those facts would have to be enough.

"but i promise. i'll take care of the kid."

He didn't realize then how much he would lose to that promise. How much he would lose over and over and over again.

..

Sans has to pause his story here and his hands clench his hood so tightly that the fabric looks as if he's about to tear it in two.

Grillby almost reaches for him, but the teakettles on his palms shriek and remind him just in time. Instead, he gets up, balancing the kettles expertly on his palms. Dogaressa has thoughtfully lined up the teacups on the bar and Dogamy has chosen a variety of teabags to go with each. Grillby makes the rounds, pouring everyone who wants one a cup of tea and apologizing for the fact that the bar won't be open for some time due to the town's recent events. Everyone is at least grudgingly accepting of this fact and some of the more understanding residents offer their condolences to be given to the skeletons.

When he comes back to them, the brothers have rearranged themselves. Sans is leaning almost sleepily against Papyrus, his feet up on the booth seating as he stares out the window. Still and stiff as he is, Sans almost looks like someone's toy. The thought reminds Grillby and he puts the three cups on the table with a loud clink, rummaging through his pockets with his free hand. Papyrus watches curiously and, when the hand comes out six times with Sans's pet rock and Papyrus's action figures, he lights up. Grillby sets them on the table in front of Papyrus, then turns his attention to pouring the tea. Sans's teabag is vanilla and chamomile to calm him down and Papyrus's is sweet tea with honey for his sweet tooth.

With that taken care of, he pours his own tea and puts the teapot by his elbow. His fingers curl around his cup and he brings it to his face. Cinnamon. Heavenly. As he goes to take his first sip, Sans says, "she died."

Grillby puts his tea back down and Papyrus shrinks into himself.

..

Sans had wandered into Snowdin Forest, again looking for someone he vaguely remembered. The dreams of something missing had persisted after the door lady had made him promise. His feet had brought him to the door, even though the door lady had stopped answering days ago. He was about to sit at its base, but something pulled him back. Then he heard the footsteps. In the blink of an eye, he was behind one of the trees. His breath caught in his throat as he heard the door open. That had never happened before. She had never even hinted that she would come out. He had pegged her as a homebody. Puns raced through his mind as he peered around the tree trunk.

The creature standing there was short and stubby with a ribbon tied loosely in their hair. He smiled to himself, strapping the whoopee cushion to his palm. Should he do the old 'peas to meet you' or would it be better to…to…oh.

There was dust billowing around their feet, smudged up the front of their sweater and gathered at the shoulders, as if someone had grabbed them before expiring. Their expression was simultaneously as blank as slate and as hard as stone.

This wasn't the door lady, so it must have been her human. The one he had promised to protect. He mentally stumbled over this fact. Promise. That was such an unappealing word. It meant that he had a commitment to protect this thing. He couldn't even call it a human. And where was the door lady?

His mind grazed an ugly possibility and he sank down behind his tree. Very slowly, pulling his hood over his head, he stood back up, squaring his jaw. The only way to find out was to introduce himself and figure it all out.

It was with extreme caution that he readied himself to meet the human, skulking behind them until they came to the bridge Papyrus had built. They stood there, looking at the spaces between the bars, and he took his chance, making the effort to emphasize his words. "Human. Don't you know how to greet a new pal? Turn around. Shake my hand."

Without hesitation, the creature turned around and clasped his outstretched hand in one of theirs. He laughed as the whoopee cushion reacted, but then he looked at the creature's face. Their eyes were wide open and glazed over, staring in his general direction but not reacting. Their grip was grinding the bones in his hand against each other, as if they were about to hurl themself over the edge and drag him with them. The whole set-up just struck him as impossibly eerie, like they had been waiting for him. The lack of emotion in their face made it all the worse. Monsters are emotional, it's just a side effect of being made entirely of magic. He still couldn't imagine that this creature was human, but neither could he pretend that they were just a monster.

He heard himself laugh at his own joke and tease the creature as if they were Papyrus, all the while wishing that they had been the door lady. She would have definitely laughed. Instead of saying so, he introduced himself. "i'm sans. sans the skeleton. i'm actually supposed to be on watch for humans right now. but, y'know, i don't really care about capturing anybody. now, my brother, papyrus…"

Here was his first inkling that something was wrong. The creature felt dangerous. They exuded emptiness, a sort of hungry feeling that put him on edge. The dust alone unnerved him. So why was he telling them about Papyrus's job, or about him at all?

"i think that's him over there." No, no, no, no. "i have an idea," the thing moving his mouth said mischievously, "go through this gate-thingy. yeah, right through. my bro made the bars too wide to stop anybody."

They walked over to his vacant guard station, the silly lamp that Alphys had gotten him for Gyftmas one year standing watch out front. He realized with a horrible sinking feeling that it was shaped like the creature just a split second before his mouth said "quick, behind that conveniently-shaped lamp."

The human turned towards the lamp, then back towards him. He ground his teeth against the voice and said "you don't have to if you don't want to." If Papyrus captured this thing, thinking it was human, that would be good. Undyne said they needed a soul. Something not monster had to be human. They could just take their soul and be done with the whole situation before it escalated.

His relief about this resolution turned into fear when Papyrus came striding in. "SANS!" he boomed in his big happy voice. "HAVE YOU FOUND A HUMAN YET?"

"yeah," he lied, his eyes flitting to the human standing in front of him and then back to his brother questioningly.

Papyrus's volume only got louder as he got more excited. "REALLY? WOWIE!" Sans could hear the extra exclamation points in there. "GUESS THAT'S SETTLED!" With that, he turned right around and clomped away in his big boots.

Sans stood there for a moment, aghast, before he said "that worked out, didn't it?" He had meant to put a 'for you anyway' in there, but it wouldn't come out.

He watched the human walk after his brother, the worry in his stomach feeling like lead. Before they could go out of sight, he found that his mouth was his own. "well, i'll be straight-forward with you. my brother'd really like to see a human. so, y'know, it'd really help me out…" He let them wait for it before putting everything he had into his next words. They came out soaked in his fear and hate, oozing anger like poisonous slugs. "If you kept pretending to be one." With that he turned around and left, head high and steps even.

As soon as he was out of sight, he broke into a run, racing for the door. It was still ajar and he squeezed through the gap, bursting into some sort of stone tunnel. "Door lady!" he called, as the next door, also ajar, came into sight. He slammed through and was suddenly skidding. Dust, soft and grey, flew up around his face and he coughed, even as his mind was screaming. He had just walked through someone's remains and his bones rattled in disgust and horror.

The dust was everywhere now, settling on his sweatshirt, in his eye sockets. He jumped, trying to brush it off, to get the smell of it out of his nose. She smelled like butterscotch and cinnamon, he realized, just before his magic revolted and his eye turned blue. A fragment of his vision went dark, cutting off sight in his right eye. "oh, stars," he mumbled, before he turned and ran back through the long dark tunnel. His magic made the tunnel longer, then shorter, turning it into a shortcut, waiting for him to decide where he needed to be. Papyrus, he had to get to Papyrus before the creature did. He had to get there before they got to him. His right eye pulsed and he was suddenly slipping over a patch of ice in Snowdin Forest.

Papyrus turned to him, pleasantly surprised. "SO SANS! WHEN'S THE HUMAN SHOWING UP?" Sans stopped in front of him, about to open his mouth and plead for his little brother to run and get Undyne. Then he caught brown in his peripheral vision. His eye had stopped glowing as soon as he'd seen Papyrus, restoring his sight.

As Papyrus went on about wanting to look his best for them, Sans interrupted. "say, why don't you look over there?"

Papyrus turned and his jaw went slack. Sans turned to look at the human himself, only to notice Papyrus looking at him instead, concern etched into his face. Sans directed his attention to his brother, but Papyrus had already turned to observe the human, pretending to be concerned about them. They went on like this for a bit before they turned their backs to them to confer. "SANS. OH MY GOD. I'M DIZZY. WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?"

Sans's heart sank. There wasn't going to be any Papyrus rushing off to get Undyne and he sure as hell didn't want to leave his little brother alone with this thing. "behold," he said numbly.

Papyrus regarded the creature again and Sans followed his lead, all the while trying to find a way to alert Papyrus to the danger they were in.

"OH MY GOD!" Papyrus shrieked suddenly and Sans hoped beyond all hope that he was going to scream about getting Undyne, alerting the Guard, something about his hopes and dreams. "WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME TO LOOK AT A ROCK."

He wondered briefly if screaming was an option for him before disregarding it. It would hurt his voice box anyway. "hey," he started instead, "what's that in front of the rock?"

"OH MY GOD! I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT IS." Papyrus beamed, waiting for Sans to illuminate exactly what that was. It had worked when Papyrus had no idea what a shrubbery was. Sans had been able to explain it to him in great detail, even if he had made some stuff up on the spot.

"uh. well, it's not a rock."

"NOT A ROCK?" Papyrus mused, bringing up a hand to rub at his chin. For him, this was a guessing game. His eyes brightened and he flailed his arms. "OH NO! BY PROCESS OF ELIMINATION! THAT MEANS-" he paused to strike a pose Sans was certain Undyne had taught him "-IT'S A HUMAN!"

He looked straight at the creature, clearing his throat. "Ahem. HUMAN! PREPARE YOURSELF! FOR HIGH JINKS!" He stood taller. "FOR LOW JINKS!" Here he gestured at Sans, who was looking at him with all the disbelief he could muster. Papyrus went on about what exactly the creature could expect ahead of them. When his brother ran off laughing, as if it was all one big game of high-stakes tag, Sans looked at the creature. It gazed back at him woodenly. Instead of saying anything, he wrenched himself away and after Papyrus, catching the end of his scarf and stopping him in his tracks.

"bro, how about we just go to undyne. no puzzles, no capturing."

Papyrus twitched his scarf out of Sans's fingers and bent nearly in half to make eye contact with him. "ARE YOU SICK?" he asked, shucking a glove to splay his fingers on Sans's forehead. "NO." He put his glove back on and eyed him as a terrible possibility entered his mind. "YOU'RE MAKING EXCUSES BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T CALIBRATE YOUR PUZZLES, IS THAT IT?" He stomped his foot angrily. "YOU'RE SO LAZY! YOU WERE NAPPING ALL NIGHT!"

Sans looked up at him, dumbstruck. "i think that's called sleeping." Before he could argue his case, Papyrus was yelling again, blocking him out.

"EXCUSES, EXCUSES!"

The creature appeared at the edge of the forest and walked right through the electrical maze, shutting Papyrus up even as he tried to explain it. It stared up at him, waiting for them to move onwards. It ignored all of Papyrus's further attempts at puzzles too. Some puzzles were even solved before they got there, something that rang a distant bell in the farthest reaches of Sans's mind.

He finally gave up on getting Papyrus to fetch Undyne and just started shoving him towards the bridge. The human followed, but got sidetracked somewhere. "look, pap, they'll love the gauntlet. i pro- i swear."

He stood there, watching as Papyrus checked the bonds of the weaponry involved. There was something in him, hissing and pushing for him to see this all the way through. It was there in the way he had teased the human into following them, and in the way he wanted to go find his real puzzles but had to suffer through watching them toss aside all the goofy tricks he'd put down to mess with Papyrus. He was beginning to think that it had something to do with the door lady, with the promise. It was like she'd cursed him.

The human caught up to them, standing somewhere in the middle of the bridge as Papyrus spun out his speech. The weapons emerged, held in place by strings of Papyrus's magic and ready to fire at any moment. This puzzle was the hardest to outmaneuver. The human wouldn't be able to dodge all of them without practice. And Sans wasn't intending to let them practice.

He stared them down from across the bridge as Papyrus finished speaking. Waited. Waited. Papyrus hadn't done anything. He hadn't even tried to activate the Gauntlet and Sans knew that it would work this time. "what's the holdup?"

"HOLDUP?" Papyrus huffed, turning away from the human. "WHAT HOLDUP? I'M-I'M ABOUT TO ACTIVATE IT NOW!" He had the look on his face, the same look he'd had when the Snowdin Shopkeeper had run out of spaghetti.

Sans tried to be funny even through the cold finger of fear on his neck. "that, uh, doesn't look very activated." He gave Papyrus a grin, praying.

"THEY'RE PROBABLY GOING TO WALK THROUGH IT," Papyrus finally whined. "AND IT WON'T BE ANY FUN AT ALL."

Sans considered laying down in the snow and letting the human finish him off after all at that point. It was only the force putting pressure on his skull that made him comment "so this human thing was a bust, huh?" He itched to activate the Gauntlet himself, to spear the human through, to blast them off the bridge, but he couldn't do it. The promise held him fast.

They exchanged some banter, but Sans was barely paying attention, ribbing his brother in all the right places while keeping an eye on the strangely silent human. Papyrus ran off to ready himself for a fight, having decided that that was the only way to capture the human.

The creature began to shamble after him, but Sans walked right into its path, sizing it up with his best menacing air. "So, you're about to fight my brother. Here's some friendly advice for you." He moved forward, shifting them back onto the bridge. For the first time, he caught a glint of emotion on their face as he made his eye sockets blank. It wasn't the emotion he was looking for. The 'don't' died in his throat as he realized that the look in their awful green eyes was glee. It was his turn to take a step back, staring. They stepped forward, the glove on their hand coming up as if they were about to punch him with it. In what would be his worst moment, he fled through a shortcut rather than face what they had in mind.

The next time he saw them, Papyrus's scarf was tucked in his pocket and there was nowhere left to run.