Learn When to Quit

— Act I —

Don't Let Him Find Out

— Scene 3 —


Instant noodles.

Well, he didn't really know what he had been expecting. Besides, he wasn't even hungry to begin with.

Still, it was… somewhat surprising. Not in a good way.

If the situation kept deteriorating at such rate… His bones rattled slightly as he started to feel some odd weight upon his scapulae.

One more reason to get this over with as soon as possible.

His train of thoughts was suddenly cut off, though; a voice had raised upon the global amalgam of various noises coming from the whole room, light and yet filled with a somewhat gloomy and low tone.

"So? How did it go?"

He hardly raised his white pupils towards the reptile, showing some trace of surprise; though it was clear that it wasn't genuine to the least. She chuckled in a serious tone, trying to lighten up the atmosphere but not smiling at all.

"Come on, Sans. It's obvious that you're saving some for… later. You can tell me. It worked, didn't it?"

She was actually faintly smiling at the end of her last sentence, and her eyes betrayed some glimmer of hope in a few shining sparks at the corner of her pupils.

Yet he only lowered back his skull and frowned edgily.

"you sure this is the best place for this kind of conversation?"

He had slightly risen a tense yet nonexistent eyelid, carefully perking discreet glances at the surrounding monsters. They were all eating and chatting more or less cheerfully — as cheerfully as you could be while having been sheltered in the depths of the True Laboratory for the last few weeks, still mourning over the all too many losses of both friends and family all over the Underground, ever so filled with grief and, still in some way, incomprehension and disbelief…

Yes, they pretty much had quite a few other things on their minds already, probably too much to actually think about eavesdropping on others' gossiping for no reason.

Yet they never could be too cautious. Any seemingly insignificant mistake could still lead to global failure. He couldn't afford not to care about that risk anymore.

Especially when he had never been this close to finally ending it all.

His colleague followed absent-mindedly his eyes for a few seconds, but she soon stopped and returned to her (almost) relaxed attitude.

"They don't pay any attention to us. And Asgore returned in New Home to check on the Souls and the Barrier. He won't bother us."

Once again, she had tried to chuckle as if she wanted to dismiss it as an irrelevant joke… But it was obvious that this apparent cheerfulness was just a façade she was trying to put for both of their sakes. And Sans was internally deeply thankful for that, no matter how impenetrable his thoughts seemed to be at the moment.

Sometimes, he just was tired of being the comic. And this specific evening he simply was tired of pretty much everything.

"what did you tell him, by the way?" he asked suddenly.

"That the coolant loop from Snowdin temporarily ran out of ice and that the reactors didn't like it." she shrugged, slightly eyeing him an insistently accusing yet seemingly teasing glare. "Now, next time you intend to run that thing, at least tell me." she added immediately in a lower and serious tone. "The monsters were freaking out, and I even heard some rumors about the human being back and having damaged the CORE or something."

His eye sockets twitched anxiously as his skull slightly lowered uncomfortably.

Yeah, pretty much what he had feared.

"and what about the actual damage?"

"No big deal. 'Just' a massive overheat." she retorted dryly. He was not looking at her, but the simple fact of hearing sarcasm coming from the usually all-so-shy Alphys was talkative enough. Her tone was calmer when she kept talking, but she still was just as severe: "We've been lucky this time, but you won't wanna turn your thing on again anytime soon. The CORE's a real pain to reload, so please try not to make it go haywire with your creepy metaphysical biz. Some people here really need that energy."

He sighed tensely, feeling guilt crawling on his back.

"don't worry. if everything goes as planned, it'll just be used once more, as soon as i'm done. and this time nobody will have to care about the consequences. not even you or asgore."

There suddenly was a heavy silence. Alphys lowered her muzzle as all traces of scolding had left, as she instead frowned sheepishly while looking away. She paused for a few seconds, not knowing what to retort— and yet she still had something to say.

"I-I really feel bad for keeping h-him out of all that mess, though. W-Why didn't you want to tell him, again?"

The skeleton's shoulders rattled slightly as he tensed. If her stuttering was back, then she really cared deeply about that issue.

It was surprising at first to hear this confession coming from the very one who had been keeping somewhat similar secrets for this long from that very same monster. Almost… funnily ironic.

But he didn't point it out.

Maybe she, too, was tired, after all.

So he just sighed deeply but silently, and replied the same answer as ever:

"he wouldn't understand. nobody around us would." He frowned slightly and paused, looking away and lowering his tone even further when he spoke back. "not in this timeline."

Alphys winced, feeling some chills run down her spine.

Every time he would bring back that topic, she would remember.

She would remember that she would not remember.

She would remember that she was not technically part of his plan. That even if he had told her most of the story, she was just some disposable sidekick that would forget everything and start over without even being aware of it as soon as the problem would be solved. That despite everything and no matter how honest she knew he was when trying to comfort her — he was going to bring all her friends back and get them to the Surface and restore all hope and happiness to all monsters, shouldn't she be happy about it? —, he was just using her and he would throw her away once he was ready to go back in time or whatever, just the way he had done every single time before. Even though she knew that was definitely not the way he was seeing it… she sometimes wondered why herself was seeing this under such perspective and if she wasn't somewhere in there completely wrong and egoist or maybe even crazy or paranoid to start thinking such stupid things but…

He could remember. He had never told her how many timelines he had been through since he could keep track of them, but his answer when she had asked him about it — that, ironically, he had lost track of it an awfully long time ago — and his desperate and tired look back then… were telling enough.

He was tired of remembering and yet he had to remember every single time. Even worse than this— He had lived through all those same events so many times. He had probably heard her ask him the same questions over and over. Sometimes she could see in his look some kind of annoyance or boredom, as if he had already answered that question a million times in other timelines even though he knew that he could not blame her for that because she couldn't possibly know how boring and predictable she had become over the different timelines and how he still wanted to try to care about her because he still wanted to consider those puppets that couldn't remember as his friends and family because they were

He had seen them all die so many times.

Did he even care now?

Was he still flinching when he was seeing Papyrus's dust in the snow? His brother would be back just a few days later anyway, good as new and oblivious as ever, right? So why worry and mourn over the fake funerals of someone who was not even dead for real in the first place?

And now that she knew, even if she wouldn't remember, now that for now she could know and just had to wait for him to get his plan over with, why should she still mourn over Undyne and Mettaton's deaths while they would just be back someday, and she would never even get to know how heroic they had been and how many monsters they had got the chance to save before being coldly murdered…? She faintly laughed awkwardly and silently, not smiling and almost starting to feel some wet tears in the corner of her eyes.

She would remember that when he was telling her he was doing it for everyone's greater good, she knew he really meant it; and still she would remember that she was not sure deep inside whether it was for their greater good, or for their greater good.

She would remember that even if he deeply and honestly cared about her, he was not really caring about her.

And the thought was terrifying.

The skeleton leaned somewhat closer, softening his tone and giving her a comforting look.

"heh… don't worry. it'll all be over before you know it. soon you won't have to worry about any of this anymore."

Honestly, that was not helping.

And he finally seemed to get her point when he gazed back upon her, because his pupils froze in shock before starting slowly to fade as he stood back, lowering his skull on his chest and keeping for a few more seconds a thoughtful silence.

"alphys. don't tell me you want to remember that. you don't know what this is all about." He paused slightly before staring at her, some spark of confusion in his frowning nonexistent eyebrows. "… do you really want to remember this?"

"Do you really want me to forget?" she sadly scoffed, a sorry look on her muzzle.

He genuinely seemed not to understand, and she didn't doubt that he honestly thought he was doing it for her own good.

And yet, well…

She couldn't help but look away.

"i know how the happy ending is like, and you definitely won't want that kind of thoughts on your mind once we get there. Trust me."

And his eyes pierced hers as he was giving her a stern "I know what I am talking about." look. So she thought it best not to respond and merely nodded sheepishly, her head steady but low.

The same way he had been supporting her for a long time when she needed some assistance, it now had been her turn to help him, even if it was not much. She was willing to return the favor despite everything— and all the more when his secret plan would actually "save the world", whether her dumb and selfish doubts were thinking otherwise or not. For once she had an opportunity to do something worthy that would not end up with dark corridors and slimy endlessly suffering horrors by hazardously messing with death itself; she could not just let him down when she knew he was the one in the right.

And yet her own role in this little project of his had been limited to the strict minimum; she basically was just there to cover up for his constant absences and justify why he would spend that much time back in Snowdin, while… there was nobody left there.

Asgore himself was merely thinking that all this time Sans had been desperately working on the time machine itself, with the promise to one day get everyone back in time and "neutralize" the human before it could do any harm. One blatant half-lie that would not even matter since the time machine was indeed the second half of the plan, and the time travel was its conclusion— and since Asgore himself would not even remember anything about that "official plan" past that point, what would happen after that would not even raise any problem yet. At least, not any problem potentially related to any of those little deceptions.

So basically, as soon as this excuse had been found, nobody would ever question any of Sans's absences. And he had had a lot of those.

To be more accurate, it had been weeks she hadn't seen him actually taking a break. That was the very first time they were having a normal conversation in almost two weeks; probably because amongst other reasons, for once, he wasn't simply trying to take his dinner through a shortcut and back in his basement to keep working on his crazy plan.

The first day such oh-so-shockingly-out-of-character-behavior-that-would-yet-become-a-habit-for-a-whole-month happened, she had been so taken aback by such change in attitude that she had freaked out, and literally forced him to tell her the truth: what he really was hiding, and why the heck hadn't he taken a single nap and actually worked during more than two hours straight.

She had not been disappointed by his answer.

He had told her about the "Resets", as he liked to call them. About how, in some distant timeline, he had managed to somehow keep track of them and directly remember everything he would have seen there, although he had soon enough lost any hope of ever being able to fix the situation. About how in this specific timeline, for some unknown reason but for the very first time in maybe hundreds or even thousands of tries for all he cared, the human had still not "Reset" the timeline all over again ("maybe they finally all got bored" was the way he had shrugged it off, though he hardly seemed convinced himself); about how he simply had to take that chance, because he just couldn't let such an amazingly fortunate opportunity go to waste, no matter the cost. Because it sure as hell wouldn't ever come back anytime soon, if it ever came to an end— and it definitely would, some day. If they didn't do anything to prevent it, one day, some player would come back eventually, only to erase everything all over again. It only was a matter of time.

He had told her about how he had later found some blueprints somewhere in his computer's files that were explaining some curious facts about the human, the Resets, and where exactly the problem really came from. About how he had come up with a plan to solve it once and for all, thanks to those files' guidance.

About how, yet, he feared any moment that they could come back and Reset once more before he was done, thus erasing all of his insanely humongous work just by the blink of an eye. He had only had the time to start building the physical machine after three weeks since he had spent all that previous time stupidly making sure that all that data he had oh so miraculously found was not a joke of some kind; but now that he finally was on the move, one unfortunate Reset would have just been the last straw.

As a consequence…

Now that she was seeing him actually sitting absent-mindedly in front of her in the lab's refectory, adding this not-so-little sudden change in attitude to the earlier massive power failure in the whole Underground, it had not taken her much longer to put two and two together.

He had won.

He had won, and he was now just happy to finally go back to his legendary laziness and take as much benefit from it, now that his race against time itself was finally over.

And after such horrifying torture, who could blame him? That leisure he was gladly taking there was utterly deserved.

"by the way, i have some news about that reality they're coming from. just thought you'd be curious about it."

And the lizard indeed perked up a bright new pair of eyes, this time genuinely sparkling with interest.

Since Sans had started researching about it and redone his calculations multiple times, he had kept telling her during their rare conversations about that world in which, for some reason, their own history was merely a video game that some random humans (not the same kind as the ones living on the Surface, but humans nonetheless apparently) would be playing on their computers without even being aware of the true impact of their actions. She had laughed at him at first, thinking that he was pulling a prank on her otaku side: maybe sometime before, Mettaton had told him about her theories and fantasies about Mew Mew: Kissy Cutie possibly being real in an alternate universe, and now he was somewhat trying to pull her leg with that.

But since he had shown her the results of his research and explained some of the blueprints (as well as showed her the wonders of that other universe's internet– and accidentally forgot to specify the exact spelling of the game's title when he had offered her to use their search engine— ugh, that was probably the only thing that gave her relief about the thought of getting her memory eventually wiped out), she really had started to believe him.

Well, she still wasn't pretty sure how all these "Saving" and "Resetting" things worked in real life (or, should she say here "from their own point of view from inside their normal life that looks totally real but wouldn't be according to other beings from another universe"? well, that was confusing. And was their universe really only a virtual thing? She felt physical enough, thank you very much), and Sans really had tried not to waste any second telling her about anything unnecessary, since he could not afford to lose any moment that he could instead spend on his project…

But now that he merely was here for casual banter and leisure, he would be glad to maybe answer some questions and discuss about physics with a colleague for some actual fun.
And of course she was more than eager to play along, and she encouraged him to tell her whatever he could think about. Anything would do.

"first off, let's start with the mind-blowing ones." he jokingly started, his eye sockets glimmering with mischief. "they don't have magic. and by that i mean, they don't have any magic at all. seems like the natural amount of magic back there is so low that when you try to gather some all in one place it'd be very unstable and, i dunno… melt or even disintegrate or something. kinda a miracle their souls can sustain themselves despite that." Yet his tone had suddenly lost its playful spark when he had uttered those last parts, gradually becoming gloomy as his seriousness had already taken over. "so if you thought of going there for your vacation or something, that's sorta out of the picture."

He had still tried to joke and chuckled awkwardly, but she had seen his right eye twitch in a very discreet and subtle way, while his pupils were filled with… was this regret…?

Nonetheless, that revelation in and of itself was indeed pretty much… surprising. They had the ability to alter the very fabric of space and time in another dimension, and yet they didn't even have magic in the first place?

"… Wow." was all she managed to say, completely stunned.

"yeah. pretty much unexpected, uh?" And yet his slight laugh died within seconds, as his expression suddenly darkened. "but now flip the problem the other way around." He slowly raised his skull, facing her with somewhat fading pupils, staring at her intensely and gravely before getting to the point: "In this world, there is magic."

Alphys slightly frowned at first, pausing for a few seconds while trying to follow his train of thoughts. She understood that he wouldn't utter the rest of his conclusion for fear of being heard by someone else, and she immediately deduced that said conclusion had to do directly with the humans themselves; so she didn't ask him to clarify his idea.

But quickly enough she lit up and widened her eyes in some kind of strange mixture between flashes of inspiration, sudden fright, and still yet those little sparks of the fullest joys which were common to the scientist suddenly in awe before the brilliance of one of her colleagues' latest discovery, and the curious child eager to learn even more.

"So that's why you wanted a human from there!" she lighted up in a mutter, and Sans flinched upon seeing her excitement. Fortunately she had still somehow managed to whisper this exclamation and did not get any attention from the others, but he remained nervous and couldn't help but think that it had been close.

"of course there was that little part of just, ya know, telling them about what they were doing… but yeah. i wouldn't heat up the reactors down to the core just for that."

She ignored his attempted pun, though that one was quite weak coming from him; and that could not be a good sign, now that she realized that it actually had been his first pun in quite a while — maybe even a few weeks. She genuinely was starting to worry about his health now, as she looked through his pale and heavy eye sockets. H-How much sleep did he get recently?!

But that knucklehead would never listen, of course. He never had over the past month, so why would he now?

She sighed tensely.

"I guess that explains how they're doing it, then… E-even though I'm not sure that's really healthy for them too. With the entire situation we're in I-I wouldn't be surprised if it puts them under lots of stress, so their soul must be under intense pressure if they're really so…" And yet she suddenly realized and shuddered nervously, her scales seemingly starting to look slightly paler. "B-B-But, Sans— T-Then, isn't bringing one of them here, like… a d-doomsday-enhancing hazard?"

It didn't help that he had slowly raised a pair of fully darkened pupils to face her.
The plainly aware look he was giving her was all the more reassuring.

Sans, you can't be serious…

"it is." he tensely confirmed. "and that's why i absolutely need you to hush it up. no one can know, and especially not him."

Her gaze was shocked to the extent that her glasses started to fall off her muzzle and made her readjust them with a trembling clawed, four-fingered hand. If she wasn't already aware of the circumstances and the helplessness of the situation, she would have freaked out and growled at him, calling him names and questioning over his sanity for having done such irresponsible research and experiments, all the more while he had been fully aware of the risks.

But now it was too late for that anyway.

"if asgore ever got her and absorbed her soul alongside the six others, well…" He chuckled tensely, trying to joke somberly: "need a little help here. what's above godliness?"

She never answered.

A long silence filled their table as both of them tried to avoid looking at the other. They attempted to eat when they noticed their dinners were getting cold (despite the fact that none of them were hungry), as if they could engulf their own issues in the surrounding echo of multiple voices given by the ever so oblivious nearby monsters.

Soon enough, Sans had sternly stood up and taken his plate, wordlessly giving a sorry but firm look before walking away.

But Alphys followed him hurriedly, trying to keep up with his rather fast pace.

"A-Anyway, uh, that human… H-How are they, then? How did they take it?"

He slowed down a little, but did not stop; although he still shrugged and chuckled in a deep tone.

"wanna hear a joke?" he retorted cynically. "she's got necrophobia. can't look at a skeleton or anything that looks dead according to her standards without freakin' out."

"No… Really?" she asked while lowering an uncomfortable look. Poor thing.

"she said she'd deal with it. not like it'd be a real issue, but still, that's rather stupid."
… And somewhat insulting, probably; but he genuinely was trying not to feel too offended. She was not doing it completely on purpose after all, and it had almost even felt like she was actually feeling guilty over it without him needing to say anything; so blaming her for something she was already blaming herself for was merely a waste of time and energy. "well, on the bright side of things, seems like she's gonna do her job without questioning anything i guess. at least she's not gonna be in the way and she pretty much agrees to the plan so far."

And yet she knew that tone. He could be a very talented actor, but still, when he was on his nerves, he was laying a little less effort on hiding his real thoughts… So she had felt it.

"Is there something wrong, Sans?"

"she's too docile. i don't like it." Apparently, he wasn't even trying to hide his suspicions at all, since he was answering right away and getting straight to the point. "i've seen it. she's goofy, but she's perceptive… somewhat. i'm worried she might start thinking things or even already plot something in our backs. we can't trust her."

He was about to take his shortcut back to Snowdin, she just knew it. Alphys stiffened nervously.

"W-Wait!" He stopped and looked confusedly at her: "I'll come with you. Uuh, i-if you don't mind. I mean, you've had a hard time, Sans. You should seriously take a break."

He was about to retort something, but she didn't let him time to object:

"I'll take care of the human tonight. You… go to sleep. Look at you, it's like you haven't had a full night of sleep for ages. No wonder you scared them!" she jokingly yet worriedly scolded.

And it felt all the more wrong to actually have to order Sans to take a nap, of all people.

Yet he shrugged while sighing deeply, before offering her his hand.

"heh. you know what? you're right. i kinda miss my bed. haven't seen it since this morning." he winked at her.

She gladly seized his open palm with a relieved sigh, and let him guide her.

There was a little flash, and they both suddenly appeared in his living room. While he gestured her to follow him down the basement, she couldn't help but notice the changes: well, there was mostly the absence of the greenish couch, but still… the place as a whole radiated a completely different atmosphere than she could remember from the few times she had been visiting.

The lack of something, or rather someone, was practically emanating from the whole room.

Well, maybe because the one missing was the one usually taking care of the place and its aesthetics, for starters…

But she would not blame Sans for being neglectful over such things; especially not after his whole one-month-long-race-against-time issue. She still could barely believe how he had possibly survived from this.

Well, being able to warp space into wormholes probably had been a serious advantage.

Speaking of which…

"But, wait." The skeleton reluctantly stopped again, then turned around and gave her a confused yet almost annoyed look. "You said there wasn't any magic where they came from, and you only had a few seconds before the portal lost its stability and the CORE ran out of power, so… How did you get the human here, then? If you couldn't use your magic to lift them in or warp the shortcut around them, then how did you…"

She stopped mid-sentence. He merely turned away and came back to walking, deliberately ignoring the question and avoiding her look.

"Oh God. Please tell me you didn't do that." she stuttered breathlessly.

"i didn't have time to worry about collateral damage, ok? it's all gonna be reset as soon as i'm done anyway, so let's just forget about that."

His pace sped up, but she immediately caught hold of him and firmly grabbed his right humerus, forcing him to stop.

Great. He was already starting to regret having brought her along.

"Sans. Let me see. M-Maybe I can fix it—"

"And what do you want to fix it with, determination?"

She froze, letting him abruptly elude her grasp and turn away from her.

"S-S-Sans… Please. Just let me see. Maybe there's still something I can do, e-even if it's not much…" she tried shyly, even though she knew he would not believe one word of it— she hardly managed to put some slight semblance of conviction into it herself.

"there's nothing you can do." he merely shrugged. "seriously, forget about that, i'm alright. i'll admit it's not very hand-y, but it's not like it hurt or anything." he jokingly stated before chuckling in a tone that actually sounded almost genuine.

She sternly but cautiously pulled his arm out of his pocket and rolled up the sleeve. He was wearing a white glove over his hand, but…

"Oh. My God."

Sans rolled his eyes angrily.

"geez, i told you, it's alright. not like it was gonna get worse or anything, now. it's stable again and it won't change." He carelessly pulled his sweater's sleeve back in place before engulfing his arm back in his hoodie's pocket. "and that only makes one more good reason to complete that damned thing as soon as possible. once i reset the timeline it'll just be reverted back to normal, just like everything else."

"So you really were that desperate, eh…" she uncomfortably muttered, defeated.

He merely shrugged lazily, or at least so it seemed. He carelessly turned his back to her and wordlessly asked with a vague gesture if she was still here to follow him to the basement. But that was when she remembered:

Sans was left-handed.

If this had affected his right arm, then it could only mean…

Her eyes widened in horror.

"W-W-Wait, you knew this would happen? Are you CRAZY!?" she gasped in shock.

"that was to be expected. sort of. but hey, let's look on the bright side: it actually didn't come up as bad as i imagined."

She could hardly believe it, and yet he deliberately was ignoring her pleadingly compassionate eyes.

"And… H-How much time do you think you will need before… being done?" she asked thoughtfully.

"i finished the blueprints right before leaving, so now i'll just have to work on the machine itself." he shrugged tensely. Yet he somewhat frowned before continuing: "the real problem will be the generator, i guess."

She did not dare ask him how much power he would need to run it— but she had guessed it would definitely be much more than his previous experiment. At this point, she did not even dare ask him where he would find such power, since the CORE itself would probably never be enough… And yet she found there, lying carelessly on the floor, a few random papers. One of which was reading clearly the figure of "42 kMS."

Oh for the love of everything that's holy that was huge.

"S-Sans… Are you really sure you know what you are doing…? Is everything really in control?" The equivalent of forty-two thousand bloody monster souls. About three regular human souls and a half. Just— holy crap.

"do you honestly think it can get any worse than this?" he calmly growled in a low tone. He paused to sigh slowly and deeply, closing his tired eyes. "it's not the means that count. i'm gonna bring back everyone, and fix this once and for all. don't you want that? they'll all be back and safe. papyrus. toriel. undyne."

She had flinched upon hearing that last name, and she shuddered even more as she perfectly knew who the next one he would utter was:

"… mettaton."

She bit her lips, trying to repress the tears about to run away from the corner of her eyes and roll on her cheeks.

His hopelessness had been driving him to despair and an apparent laziness for countless timelines and for an amount of time that could have been decades or even centuries for all she could imagine. Now that same hopelessness was driving him to get half-crazy working on a lost cause.

She wondered which one was the worst.

After all, if she had ever known the answer… she herself wouldn't have been in such a mess, right?

"I-I'm worried, Sans. It just doesn't suit you anymore." She slowly raised an uneasy and desperate gaze towards him and weakly distorted her muzzle into a sad smile. "It never did, actually."

He already was starting to walk away, again.

"Sans… We can't bring them back."

"I can. I just need time."

"Sans, it can't work and you know it. You'd need to run it with something as powerful as at least threehuman souls. You'll never find the power to create that much energy with pipes and wires. Come on, even the CORE isn't powerful enough! So unless you plan to run it with…"

She stopped mid-sentence, widening her eyes into a blank expression.

Sans didn't move, but seemed to freeze.

"of course not. what the hell are you thinking about." he coldly retorted. "i'll just… we'll find another way. maybe the core just needs a few adjustments and—"

"The CORE is FINE!" she scolded in a burst of anger and worry. She immediately calmed down and breathed noisily for a few seconds, before lowering her muzzle and sighing in despair. "Sans, you don't even know what you're saying anymore."

He merely buried his left hand into his pocket and let his pupils disappear.

"you're not going to stop me." he gravely stated. "will you?"

That was a rhetorical question. Of course Alphys would not stop him.

They were just having a hard time and she was right— this fatigue was draining their thoughts and none of them was in the proper state of mind to tackle such topics.

It was wiser to just stop here and now before they had to come to useless disputes.

"this will work." he still muttered in the most confident tone he could get. "it has to work."

"It won't. You know the math, Sans." And even if he did not, he would just get bored and give up when he would realize. She really hoped he could be right about it, but… All she could do was sigh deeply in regret and guilt. "J-Just go to sleep. We'll get back to that another time."

The skeleton had stopped midway in the stairs, looking down at her.

"Fine. Bone nuit."

It was all the more upsetting to hear him make one of those puns with such intonation and sarcasm in his voice.

She wanted to trust him and she knew that this was their last resort, yet it all sounded so… wrong.

Was it really worth it in the end…?

She was not sure about anything anymore.