"I'll reset," you say, your voice deceptively soft in that dense quiet, "I promise. So do me one last little favor."
Sans grunts to show you that he's listening.
You're leaning against a broken pillar, hands brushing fragments of shattered tile away to clear a space next to you. "Come here. Just...sit next to me. So I don't have to be alone for a while."
There's a genuine hunger in your eyes, echoing the brightly colored scales of a viper, iridescent poison laid out with an undeniable sincerity. It's an honest desperation, and it's this that makes him almost consider obliging you despite the transparency of the trap.
"Papyrus is dead because of you," says Sans quietly.
"He doesn't have to be," you reply. When he makes no movement to join you, your voice finally breaks, you feel heat prickling behind your eyes, "F-fucking...you fucking raped me. Please. Just do this for me."
He considers the pink froth filling your lungs, the labored breathing that indicates slow suffocation. The pallor of your lips. Your shallow inhale and the violent cough that follows. The globule of blood you spit on the ground and the streak of red left behind on the back of your hand when you wipe your mouth.
Bright-irised human with his heart in your fist, dragging him with you deep into the undertow. Sink together, breathe in the same cold water - it doesn't matter as long as the cycle continues. And it will, he knows it will. So he decides to take the bait.
Then there's that familiar flow of energy in the air again, swirling around his open palm, triggering in you an instinctive panic (and you know now that you'll never forget that vibrant shade of blue, the fear of it will follow you until the very end). You flinch away, you cover your eyes with his sleeves, waiting for that inevitable burn.
"Don't move," he says.
A familiar flash of cyan in his hand, a flick of his fingers, and there's something cold piercing your torso. Translucent blue strikes you through like a pinned moth, the rounded edges of bone peeking just barely from between your ribs.
Sans seats himself close enough to touch you. He leans his weight on his hands and glances at the azure speared through your chest.
"That thing's not corporeal right now," he tells you, "But any sudden movements and -" He draws a swift line across his neck and makes an exaggerated gagging sound.
"Jesus," you say, "You really don't trust me, huh?"
He shrugs.
Slowly, carefully, you stretch an arm towards him, and he does not move away. Your fingers slide across the cool tile as they inch towards him, consuming the empty space between the two of you like a high tide, until they rest gently on his phalanges.
"Hey," you say, "What I said before - it wasn't true. I did remember you."
Sans snorts derisively.
"I knew that already," he says. He flips his hand over and grips your fingers tightly in his own, "You've always been a terrible liar."
The minutes tick by. Sans counts them off with the flutter of your pulse, which beats a hastening rhythm as your borrowed time draws to a close, escalating from a steady thrum to an anxious racket of rushing blood.
You laugh nervously, "It's stupid - but all of a sudden I'm scared." Your knuckles are white with tension, fingers clenching so hard that they shake, "You'll make it fast, won't you?"
"If that's what you want."
An audible swallow. Voice wavering, thick with repressed emotion, "Please don't use the blasters."
The fear apparent in your speech catches him off guard, and in your sad little negotiation of his execution methods he sees how defeated you truly are. It should be a relief to him - in this state of mental exhaustion you won't be able to skip back to the refuge of your last save - but it's not.
You look so afraid. You're even trembling a little, as if it's the first death all over again, but he knows that it's the uncertainty of resetting that you dread.
You are the crux of possibilities in this concentric circle of a world. An unwilling martyr with a knife in her uncertain hand.
Cut here, says the blade, And you can leave. Or stay your hand and continue walking this labyrinth of thorns.
The cut on your cheek is coagulating, dried blood smudged below your eye and around the corner of your mouth.
"Look here for a sec," says Sans. You tilt your face towards him and he licks his thumb, then wipes a long wet stripe along your cheekbone, smearing away the stain. You hold tight to this brief window of weakness, you cup the hand lingering at your face in your own and thread your fingers through his. The cyan in his eye flickers briefly in response - he stiffens his back and you feel the magic running you through give a quick throb of warning - but nothing else.
His eyes are pale and sharp in their sockets, and you think of lanterns in the dark, lights around which moths revolve until they fall, with tattered wings, into incandescent flames. Do they die in ecstasy, having finally touched that transfixing white fire? And when they burn, when the dust of their bodies melts away into fine smoke, are they finally cleansed?
You are cinders, you are ash, you are an empty shell of bitter longing, but still you reach out with your undeserving arms for a glimpse of real intimacy. You crave absolution - but you are soiled, you will carry the mark of your sin until the end. Yet you say his name like a prayer, you soften your gaze and grip his fingers tightly.
He leans forward, hesitates, and in that pause you impulsively rush to meet him, you press your parted mouth to his in a coppery kiss. When you pull away there's an aftertaste of iron and nectar, tangy and sweet on his tongue, filling him with a painful nostalgia that makes him untangle his hands from yours to clutch at you possessively, like a drowning man to a piece of wreckage.
Sans lets himself sink into your touch, lets you slip your fingers up his shirt and into the slats of his ribs, dragging him towards you until his body fits into your own. And it hurts to have him pressed against you like this - he's all edges and hard angles against your wounded flesh - but he's warm and he's real and he's so much more than you deserve.