There is a mirror standing in front of you.
It's tall and wide, spanning your entire field of vision. You want to look around to see how big the mirror really is, but you can't seem to tear your eyes away from your own reflection.
You are nude, and, at first, you're deeply bothered by it. You're in an unfamiliar place, with all of your bodily imperfections on display. It feels like someone's watching you, even though you can't see anyone in the reflection of the bare room you're in. Despite your nakedness, you don't make any move to cover yourself. You have the deep sense that it would only aggravate whoever was watching.
As you stare at your reflection, you see something on your back. Its indistinct shape is peering over your shoulder, a black mass that you can't seem to focus on. Whenever you try, your eyes just slip away. Now that you've seen it, you think you can feel it there, tickling your skin. Is it just your imagination?
You take a step forward, unaided. Your ankle doesn't hurt, but you can't quite remember why it should, anyway. The thing on your back seems to ripple… excitedly? You get right up close to the mirror, as close as you can get without touching it. Your reflection smiles maniacally.
...Wait, you didn't do that.
You watch with a sick fascination as your reflection closes its eyes (Have you ever seen your own eyes closed before? Perhaps in a discarded picture, once or twice). The mass on your back vibrates wildly. You can feel it crawling, digging its claws in and scuttling around… you don't like this anymore. This isn't interesting or fun. Your reflection's eyes are still closed, but you don't want them to open. You try to run, but you can't. You try to look away, but you can't. Your breath hitches as you begin to cry. You want it to stop, stop, stopstopstopstopstop-
Your reflection opens its eyes.
Its eyes are black.
You woke to a hand touching your shoulder.
"GAHHH!" Lurching into a sitting position, you jerked away from the touch.
"Woah, woah, woah," After a moment of panic, you recognized Sans, holding up his hands and backing away slowly, "it's just me, kid."
Panting heavily, you took a moment to adjust to your waking surroundings. You were in a dark room, barely able to tell where you were despite the fact that your eyes were well-adjusted to the dim light. You recognized Sans' shape, mostly by the pinpricks of white in his eyes. Underneath you was a bed… or, more like a mattress, because there didn't seem to be a bed frame. The sheet that was supposed to cover it wasn't even on; it was lying in a clump at your side. However, there was a thick blanket that had been covering you, but was now tangled around your legs as though you had been thrashing in your sleep. You didn't remember that being there when you had fallen asleep. Finally, you looked up to see the vague shapes of a dresser and a treadmill, and something near your feet that was… moving?
"I'm in your room." You stated the rather obvious fact, purely for your own benefit. Your racing heart began to slow and the sticky sweat on your back and face started to cool. "How long was I asleep?"
Sans dropped his hands and put them in his pockets. "Hour and a half, more or less." You groaned and rubbed your face with your hands. Not nearly enough time to justify having that horrible nightmare. "Sorry, but, uh, Undyne's leaving now and I think Paps is gonna want to talk to you. Trust me, you'd rather have me waking you up than him." Sans shuffled his feet, looking a little uncomfortable despite his smile. "And… well, you looked like you needed waking up." You swiped a hand through your hair and it came away wet. Damn, you must've looked awful. Did you do something embarrassing while you were in the throes of your nightmare? Your face flushed red at the thought, and you were glad it was at least dark.
No sooner had the thought crossed your mind than the bedroom door flew open, bathing the room in the bright light of the hallway.
"HUMAN! OH MY GOD! I'M SO SORRY!" Before you knew what was happening, you were enveloped in an uncomfortably boney hug. Papyrus lifted you off of the bed, seemingly determined to squeeze the life out of you. You let out a surprised wheeze, but had the presence of mind to hug Papyrus back. Unfortunately, that only made him hold you tighter. "I DIDN'T KNOW UNDYNE WAS GOING TO COME! I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO! I HOPE I DIDN'T HURT YOUR FRAGILE, HUMAN BODY... ARE YOU HURT?"
I'm going to be if you don't put me down soon. "No, no, I'm fine. You did great! Good thinking, putting me under the bed like that." Thankfully, Papyrus set you back down onto the mattress, but still kept his gloved hands on your shoulders.
"Really?! I mean, of course! I am the master of quick-thinking! Nyeh heh heh!" He stepped back and put his hands on his hips, grinning proudly.
"Yeah, good job, Paps." Sans said earnestly, and Papryus preened at the praise. "But, uh, I was thinking… if Undyne's gonna just burst in like that, maybe you shouldn't be hiding out in Papyrus' room. My room's always locked anyway, don't think Undyne's even seen the inside of it. Might be safer if you moved in here." Sans eyed you warily, as though expecting you to protest his suggestion. Actually, you thought it was a good idea, but were prevented from expressing your opinion by Papyrus,
"Wowie, Sans! You're okay with that?! But you HATE other people being in your room!" He paused and looked around, as though just realizing where the three of you were. Sans shrugged.
"What can I say? This room is sansational, I'd hate to give it up." As Papyrus groaned, the shorter skeleton winked at you. That was what made you laugh, more than the pun itself. "But I suppose I can make an exception. I wouldn't want to leave you without a leg to stand on." He nodded with mock seriousness to your bum leg, but Papyrus was already on his way out the door, yelling over his shoulder,
"I AM LEAVING BEFORE THIS GETS OUT OF HAND! HUMAN, GOODNIGHT. BROTHER, ENJOY SLEEPING ON THE LUMPY COUCH!" Papyrus' cackling could be heard from down the hall, until the slamming of his bedroom door abruptly cut him off.
Sans let out a low chuckle, his face half-illuminated from the light of the hallway, "Well, guess that's settled, then." Your eyes wandered over to the trash tornado, which had been the thing you'd seen moving earlier. You kind of missed Papyrus' room already.
"Do you think Undyne will come over again?" You asked calmly as you avoided looking at Sans, working on untangling the blanket from yourself instead. You didn't particularly want him to see the fear in your eyes at the thought of getting caught by the new leader of the Underground. When he didn't answer right away, you continued, "She seems lonely. I think she misses Papyrus… they used to hang out more, right?" You looked up to see Sans staring at you, a contemplative look on his face. It felt like he was analyzing you, and it made your skin crawl.
"You're pretty good at reading people, kid." It wasn't a bad thing, but the way Sans said it, so matter-of-fact, made it feel like he was calling you out. You fidgeted nervously as you picked at a loose thread on your blanket. The tension was broken when Sans shrugged, "But, now that you mention it, you're probably right. Maybe, if Paps goes over to her place more often, she won't come over here so much. I'll talk to him about it." Sans wiped a hand over his tired face.
"You know, you two can leave me alone sometimes, if Paps has to do his job and you have to do… whatever it is you do. I'm not gonna burn down the house." You teased, and Sans' smile brightened.
"Heh, if you're sure you'll be okay… don't want you to trip on the stairs, or somethin'" Both of you glanced over at your crutches before looking back at each other.
"Ah, yeah… I should be fine." There was a beat of awkward silence before a loud banging noise from Papyrus' room prompted Sans to shuffle toward the door.
"I should go, Paps is probably waiting for his bedtime story. Sleep well." He shot you a knowing look, and your cheeks burned.
"Y-you too." With that, Sans slipped out of the room, shutting the door softly behind him and plunging the room back into darkness.
A loud groan escaped your lips as you flopped back onto the mattress, covering your eyes in the crook of your elbow. The truth was, your ankle was already mostly healed. You weren't sure whether it had really been broken or just sprained, but you'd already begun doing stretches on it and letting it bear a little weight when nobody was looking. You estimated a week before you had full range of motion on it again and could ditch the crutches completely.
But still, you hid your progress from the brothers. You kept wrapping your leg after every shower and you carefully kept your foot from touching the ground whenever anyone was watching. All of these secrets were beginning to weigh on you, but telling Sans and Papyrus about this was out of the question. For one thing, you weren't sure what the brothers would do about your situation once you were back to one hundred percent. You didn't think they would kick you out, but you couldn't hide in their house forever. This change might prompt them to start thinking about the future, and you selfishly didn't want to deal with that just yet.
The bigger problem was Flowey. You hadn't seen him since Waterfall, but you were sure he was keeping an eye on you. You'd told him that you were waiting for your ankle to heal before enacting your "plan"... if you stopped using your crutches, he would expect you to do something.
Truth be told, you had no idea what you were going to do. You'd thought about it over and over, spending many sleepless nights wracking your brain for half-remembered video game lore, but you just couldn't see any way to get yourself out of the Underground. If Toriel and Asgore were both dead, then there were no boss monsters left whose souls you could absorb. Perhaps you could've tried to find the six human souls that Asgore had collected, but even if you did, humans can't absorb other human souls. Having them wouldn't do you any good.
You rolled over in bed, pressing your face into Sans' pillow. I don't need to worry about it right now, You lied to yourself, All I need to be concerned about is getting a good night's rest… The last thing you thought about before drifting into an uneasy sleep was how you hadn't gotten the chance to join Papyrus and Sans for their bedtime story tradition.
After a (thankfully) dreamless sleep, you woke to someone's boney finger poking you repeatedly in the shoulder. This was how Papyrus woke you up every morning, though, so it was pretty par for the course.
"Psst! Human! Are you awake? I must show you something!" Papyrus whispered in your ear, though his version of whispering was equivalent to anyone else's normal speaking voice.
"M'up, jus' a minute." You swatted the skeleton's hand away and stretched, yawning deeply. Papyrus waited impatiently, ready to hand you your crutches as soon as you stood.
"Hurry!" He quickly ushered you out of the room, pointing to the couch downstairs as soon as you stepped into the hallway. "Look!" You blinked a few times, clearing the sleep away from your eyes. On the couch was Sans, who you didn't immediately recognize since he was swathed in a tight bundle of blankets. Only his head and arms were peaking out of the blanket-burrito, one arm stretched out in front of him, palm up, and the other hugging a couch pillow to his chest. You squinted. It looked like his mouth was moving, but his eyes were closed.
"He claims he doesn't talk in his sleep, but now I have proof! Nyeh heh heh!" Papyrus cackled softly, and you smiled. Sans looked so unguarded, cuddling the pillow like he was. It was cute. You wished you could hear what he was saying, but you were too far away. While observing Sans' sleeping position, a light bulb went off in your head.
"Oh my god, I have an amazing idea." Papyrus looked at you curiously. "Do you have any whipped cream?"
After digging through the brothers' fridge as quietly as you could, it turned out they did not have any whipped cream. However, they did have an overabundance of spaghetti, so you settled for that instead. You instructed Papyrus to put as much of it on Sans' outstretched hand as possible while you looked for something to tickle his face with. Papyrus was giddy with excitement at the thought of pranking his brother and kept forgetting to keep his voice down, but Sans slept like the dead so it didn't really matter.
You returned to the couch after finding a feather duster that you didn't think had ever been used. You'd had to clutch the tool between your teeth as you maneuvered with your crutches, but Papyrus took it from you when he finally finished making a perfectly-balanced pile of spaghetti on Sans' hand.
"Okay, do it." You instructed as you backed away, not wanting to get caught in the splash zone. Sans' sleep talking had stopped sometime during the planning of the prank, but he started back up again when Papyrus tickled his nose (or, more acurately, lack thereof). Unfortunately, his mumbling was incomprehensible, but you thought you heard him say Frisk's name once or twice.
Before you could think too much on that, you had the immense pleasure of seeing Sans slap himself hard in the face, spaghetti sauce flying in all directions.
"Whhhaaaa?!" Sans shot up, got tangled in his blankets, and fell off of the couch, his arms flailing comically. Papyrus barely managed to leap out of the way before he got rolled over, the two of you roaring with mirth as Sans touched the spaghetti on his face, confused. The confusion turned quickly to grim determination as he glared at you and Papyrus. "You'll pay for this!" He growled, but it was hard to take him seriously when he had a spaghetti noodle hanging out of his eye socket. You snorted uncontrollably, but you were past the point of being embarrassed about your laugh in front of the two brothers. Papyrus, practically crying from laughing so hard, pointed at you,
"IT WAS THEIR IDEA!" He yelled before taking off, running toward the stairs. Sans got a mischievous glint in his eye, looking like he was trying hard not to smile.
"Hey! Get back here!" Sans scooped a handful of spaghetti off of his own face and ran after his brother. You watched, doubling over with laughter as the two of them wrestled, Sans trying to get as much of the spaghetti on Papyrus as possible. You figured you were only safe because of your "injury," but being reminded of your lie only served to taint the mood for you. You looked on wistfully until the boys separated, Sans panting heavily but looking triumphant. Papyrus came to stand next to you, his arms folded dejectedly. Everything from his chest down was covered in tomato sauce; his face was spared only because of his height advantage.
"Huh," You scratched your chin and looked around at the messy room thoughtfully, "Cleaning up all of this spaghetti is gonna be impastable." Sans laughed. Papyrus screamed.
"NO! NOT YOU TOO!"
After the three of you cleaned up your mess (Well, more like you and Papyrus cleaned up your mess while Sans took a shower and then promptly left to do his own thing), Papyrus broke the bad news to you.
"I'm sorry, human, but I must leave you! Undyne requires assistance fixing her flooded house, and, as the Most Important Royal Person, it is my duty to help her!" He hugged you dramatically, lifting you up off of your feet. "I hope you can continue on without me for the day!" You gave Papyrus a gentle pat on the back. Sans must have talked to him last night, you supposed.
"I think I'll be okay. Have fun at Undyne's!" Papyrus reluctantly let you go, quickly snatching up the Rubik's cube and scrambling it once for you before giving you a cheery wave.
"I will! See you later!" The sound of the front door closing had a sort of finality to it. For the first time ever, you were alone in the house. You hadn't realized how quiet it could get with no one else around.
The first thing you did was solve the Rubik's cube. More than once, in fact. When Sans had first brought the toy home, you'd merely been solving it to appease Papyrus. But now, after hours of pep-talks and enthusiastic training, you were kind of starting to think maybe you could enter some competitions once you got back to the surface. It was something to look forward to, anyway.
But, without Papyrus around to cheer you on, the cube lost your attention quickly. You puttered around in the kitchen for a while, debating on if you should cook something nice for dinner before dismissing the idea as being too difficult to do on crutches. Sure, you could've forgone the crutches since Papyrus and Sans weren't around, but just because they were gone didn't necessarily mean that no one was watching…
You glanced out the window nervously. You were alone, now… what if Flowey decided this was a good time to confront you? With that thought in mind, you decided locking yourself in Sans' room was a great course of action. You scooted yourself up the stairs as quick as you could, only relaxing once you had firmly shut the bedroom door and turned the lock.
A private little laugh escaped your lips as you slumped against the door. You were losing your nerve over nothing. Everything was fine, you were going to be fine. Just stop acting so damn suspicious and Flowey had no reason to turn on you.
You looked around, running a hand through your hair. You figured, while you were there, you might as well explore Sans' room. Of course, you'd been here before in the game, getting the key mostly by accident when you'd forgotten to save after Sans' speech in the last corridor. You had to say, though, the trash tornado was much more impressive in person than it was in the game. You snatched a random piece of paper out of the tornado deftly. It looked like a page from a physics textbook.
After catching and releasing a few other knick-knacks from the tornado and finding nothing interesting, you moved on to the dresser. You riffled through his clothes, recognizing most of his wardrobe as things he'd let you borrow over the weeks you'd lived with the skeletons. Just when you were beginning to think there'd be nothing interesting to find, a glint of silver at the bottom of the drawer caught your eye.
Right, the key. You'd forgotten about that. Picking it up, you ran your fingers over its smooth surface contemplatively. No one's home… You felt a metaphorical devil on your shoulder. The angel was suspiciously absent. Couldn't hurt to check it out. As you put all of the clothes back in their place neatly, you continued to justify your nosiness to yourself even though your mind was already made up. Maybe I'll find something down there that'll help me get past the barrier. Truthfully, you doubted that was the case, but it wasn't impossible.
Before heading out to snoop, you stopped at Papyrus' room and turned on his computer. Before today, you'd never had any reason to use it; the entertainment value of the Undernet didn't even compare to the internet you were familiar with. But, since this computer originally came from the human world, it was bound to have some features you were used to. You were no computer expert, but you recognized Windows 2000 when you saw it. Sure enough, as soon as it had finished the long process of booting up, you found the application you were looking for.
Opening up Microsoft Word, you made a makeshift table for translating Wing Dings to English characters. You figured, if you were going to spy, you might as well be thorough about it. You'd always suspected that the blueprints in the basement were written in Wing Dings, and now was the time to find out. The real pain in the ass was realizing that Papyrus didn't own a printer, and having to find a piece of paper to draw the symbols out by hand.
Armed with your self-made decoder, you made your way down the stairs and peeked out the front door hesitantly. You were more afraid of a stranger or, god forbid, Flowey, finding you going between the house and the cellar than you were of either of the brothers coming home early. But, from what you could see, the town looked dead. It helped that the skeletons lived right on the edge of Snowdin; you didn't imagine people walked over this way too often. Your heart fluttering in your chest, you crutched your way around the side of the house. You fumbled with the key for a moment before fitting it into the lock, opening the door and slipping inside undetected.
It was surprisingly warm in the basement, as though Sans was down there enough to warrant heating it. Once you limped down the stairs, you immediately set to work. You felt giddy as you sifted through a drawer full of photographs. For the first time since arriving at Sans and Papyrus' house, you felt like you were actually doing something productive. You found what you were looking for in the photo album, which was a picture showing all of the main characters of the game, posing for a photo. The picture was bright enough that it had to have been taken in the sunlight, on the surface. To you, this was confirmation that, not only did alternate timelines exist, but Sans definitely knew about them. He'd somehow kept this picture, even though it could have never happened in this timeline. A shiver ran down your back. The monsters looked so happy in that picture. Was it your fault that they weren't anymore?
It didn't escape you that this timeline you were currently in was also the very last one you'd completed in the game. Did this mean that all of your previous playthroughs had actually happened, too? You placed that thought firmly in the "I'll worry about it later" pile, but still, it made your breath come a little quicker.
Moving on from the photo album, you put your decoder to work and examined the blueprints next. You were right; they were definitely written in Wing Dings. Unfortunately, even with the decoder, you still couldn't make heads or tails of the plans. The title said it was a "Time Machine," which was unsurprising to you, but otherwise the blueprints were too complicated for you to understand.
As you were muddling your way through a hastily-scribbled note on the side of the page, you heard the telltale creak of footsteps on the old wooden stairs. Frantically, you scrambled to find a hiding place. How did someone get in here?! You hadn't heard the door open! Your stomach dropped as you realized you had no time to hide. A sickening feeling of dread filled you, and you barely had time to crumple up your decoder and stuff it in your pocket before Sans rounded the corner.
"Uhh…" Sans froze in place, staring at you, dumbfounded.
"I'm sorry! I found the key in your drawer, and I just wanted to see, I didn't think- I didn't know- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm-" Oh god, it was over, wasn't it? The jig was up, Sans was going to know you knew, he was going to know you'd killed his brother, you'd killed him, and… You felt like you were choking.
"Hey, calm down, it's okay." Sans' soft voice broke through your internal panic. You registered a hand resting on your shoulder. "Deep breaths." You tried, but you couldn't. Were you… hyperventilating?
The self-awareness helped you come to your senses. Somehow, you found yourself on the hard, concrete floor, Sans kneeling in front of you with a concerned expression on his face. You touched your cheeks, and were surprised to find them wet.
"S-sorry." You sniffled.
"Yeah, I got that." Sans joked as he rubbed soothing circles into your shoulder. You laughed breathlessly.
"That's… never happened before." It had only been for a moment, but you couldn't believe you'd freaked out like that. You felt a little sick again as you realized why you'd panicked in the first place. "I-I shouldn't have come down here." Sans frowned,
"Probably not," He agreed, still rubbing your shoulder with his phalanges, "But I'm not mad." You looked up at him sharply,
"You're not?" Sans chuckled at your astonishment.
"Nah. Shouldn't've left the key in the drawer. You were bound to find it eventually." He shifted so that he was sitting next to you, close enough that your arms were pressed together. Still trying to catch your breath, you leaned forward so that your head was between your knees and just listened as he talked. "This is, uh, where I've been disappearing off to every day. I haven't told you or Paps about it because, well, it's not going so good. Figured there was no reason to get anyone's hopes up until I made some progress."
"Progress… on what?" You asked shyly, fully aware that you didn't deserve this information he was giving you. Why was he being so… nice? Sans scratched the back of his head nervously.
"Something to get us out of here." He shifted around, weighing his options. "Eh, don't worry about it. It's not gonna work, anyway."
"If you didn't think it'd work, you wouldn't be spending so much time down here." You sat up straight and nudged his shoulder affectionately, glancing over at the sheet-covered machine to your left. "But you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I… uh… shouldn't have snooped, anyway." You blushed, your heart still racing from residual anxiety. Sans stood up and offered you a hand.
"C'mon, let's get back in the house." You grabbed your fallen crutches and allowed him to pull you to your feet. "I wish you hadn't gone outside… that was kind of stupid."
"It was a little, wasn't it?" You sighed when you got to the stairs. There were entirely too many stairs in this place. "Guess I'm going a little stir crazy."
"Well, how'd you like to go out tomorrow night?" You stopped at last step, looking at Sans incredulously. He wasn't looking at you, and his cheeks were flushed blue.
"Are you… asking me out?" You still felt a little unreal from that freak out, and couldn't be sure you were reading the situation right.
"Uh, crap, this is a bad time, isn't it? Sorry, forget I said anything." He shuffled his feet. His nervousness was... kind of adorable.
"I'd love to!" You blurted out. You couldn't understand what Sans saw in you, especially in this moment, but why not? This day was already crazy, might as well make it crazier.
"Okay! How does eight o'clock sound?"
"Hmm, I dunno... I'll have to check my calendar." You joked, but Sans was uncharacteristically slow on the uptake. He looked crestfallen for a half-second before grinning.
"Right, well, I'll… I look forward to it." With that settled, he opened the door for you, checking to make sure there was no one around before leading you out into the cold. In all of that excitement, you'd forgotten to give Sans his key back. By the time you realized your mistake, you decided to just keep it. You never knew when you might need access to a half-finished time machine, after all.
