.

Not with a Bang but with


CHAPTER TEN:

A Massive Anomaly

Warnings for PTSD implications throughout the chapter, plus implied alcoholism mention, and lots of bs science.

A quick bit of context – in this timeline, Frisk is aware of the details of Flowey's backstory (when he first woke up in the garden and how he came to experiment with the timeline etc). You only get to hear his monologue in Genocide, and NWABBW Frisk has only ever done one Pacifist run, but I'm diverging slightly from the canon for plot convenience here.

oOo

Sans took a nap when they got home from Grillby's. He slept through dinner, and it was only a couple hours later that he woke and Papyrus brought him his meal up to their bedroom.

Frisk could hear Sans and Papyrus fighting after that.

The sound of it frightened her: she'd never, ever seen the brothers do anything worse than bicker over stray socks.

She tried to ignore them, and focus on her spelling practise where she was sat at the kitchen table, but every so often her gaze slid upstairs to their bedroom door, and she'd catch snatches of their conversation.

"… quit nagging me, god… "

"… WORRIED about you!…"

"…nothing, Paps, you don't gotta worry… "

" …THOUGHT you were… "

The door opened and Sans stalked out, wearing his hoodie over a pair of pyjamas. "I said it's fine, Papyrus. I know what I'm doin'. Just go spar with Undyne or something." He slammed the door shut behind him, then teleported out of sight. Frisk just caught a glimpse of Papyrus before it shut, standing with his shoulders slumped and expression defeated.

Frisk hesitated. Though Sans, having been asleep, didn't know it, Undyne was out; she had been invited to tea at Asgore's. And more importantly, Papyrus was obviously distressed. She ought to go see if he was all right, comfort him.

She got up from her seat and began to make for the stairs when her soul gave another painful pang, and she winced.

She faltered, glancing over her shoulder.

Though Dunkle Sans could technically have gone anywhere, Frisk had an idea of where he might be. She needed to talk to him more, needed more answers, and hadn't he said he had work to do?

When they'd moved into the house, her family had put a good deal of work into upgrading the basement, which hadn't been much more than ugly concrete floor and the washing machine and dryer. (The latter of which still didn't work). Though it was still a work in progress, it currently doubled as a sort of makeshift lab for her Auntie Alphys, who spent a great deal of time down there to work at her personal projects.

But Alphys also shared the space with Sans, who used the basement to tend to whatever it was he did when he wasn't napping. Though he spent much of his time in the basement doing casual math with Alphys on the whiteboards that had been set up, he had his own little work desk in a corner, and he'd even brought the strange, broken machine from his old workshop back in the Underground. This was a large, tall, boxlike contraption made of metal that set next to his desk. Pet projects, he'd told Frisk when she'd asked, and hadn't said anything more on the matter.

If Sans had "work to do," chances were that he was down there.

Frisk headed down to the basement, and indeed she found her Dunkle Sans hunched over his desk, a steaming mug of coffee next to him. Instant.

He glanced up at her as the stairs creaked and gave her a small, faint grin. He looked tired. "Hey, kid. Whatcha doin' down here?"

Frisk's gaze fell on the machine in the corner. Normally, it was covered by a tarp, but today the tarp lay in a rumpled heap on the floor, though the machine didn't look any better than it had when Frisk first discovered it – it was still malformed and dented in places, the metal covered in scorch marks and seeming to have melted at some point. Frisk came to stand next to him. "What are you doing down here?"

Sans shoved his paperwork aside, giving Frisk just enough time to catch sight of it. It was all scrawled equations, and some of the older-looking papers were covered in nothing but strange symbols like a secret code. "Work. I'm a man of my word."

She fiddled with the hem of her sweater. "About Gaster?"

Sans almost flinched, then sighed, and waved her closer. "Here." He nodded at the weathered armchair sitting between the two desks. Frisk hesitated before perching on the arm of the chair to get a view of Sans's desk. "I can explain it to you, if you like." When Frisk perked up a bit, he shrugged noncommittally. "'s all just theory really. No point in explaining the math of it. And anyway… could do with a bit of your input."

"My input?"

He cut his eyes at her. "You're the time anomaly. You know all kinds of stuff about the timeline I don't."

Frisk, intrigued, leaned a little closer. "So… what are you working on?"

Sans tapped his paper with the end of his pencil. "Well, I was tryin' to get this old machine working, but it's messed up pretty bad. So I was just thinking. Looking over some older work."

Frisk stared at him, confused. Sans sighed, and knocked against the body of the machine at his side.

"This machine's been pretty busted up. I brought it up when we moved here, meant to try and fix it, but I never got around to it. I've been trying to see if it can do anythin' for me, but it's a lost cause. So I, uh, might hafta do something I'd really, really rather not do, but if it comes down to it… " He sighed and looked off to the side. "Man, I really brought this one on myself, didn't I?"

Frisk's blank stare didn't change, and at last Sans ran a hand down his face. "Okay. Let's start at the beginning. I sure hope you like science, kid."

Sans grabbed a blank piece of paper and his pencil. "So. You can Save. Reset. Reload. We talked about all this earlier, yeah?" Frisk nodded solemnly, and Sans tapped the eraser of the pencil against the desk. "And like I said back at Grillby's, that power makes you what we call a time anomaly.

"You're powerful. Incredibly powerful. That power you have, Saving and Resetting… it gives you control over time itself. And that power, well, it comes from that Determination of yours.

"Determination comes naturally to humans. It's the reason your souls are so strong. We don't really know why you're all so Determined; that doesn't matter with what we're dealing with here. But the fact is that you humans got all this natural Determination. All of you." Sans's eyes flicked up to meet Frisk's briefly as if in anticipation of some reaction, but Frisk was intent on listening and just waited expectantly. After a moment, Sans averted his gaze.

"So you know that there were human kids who fell down here before you, the ones whose souls the King gathered. And those kids were pretty Determined too. But like I said, they weren't as Determined as you – which is saying a lot, considering how much DT Doctor Gaster and Al managed to get outta them. They were tough kids, but not so Determined they had control over the timeline. They didn't have your power to Save and Reset." Sans paused. "With me so far?"

Frisk nodded. "So the kids before me weren't anomalies. It's just me." She thought briefly of Flowey, then pushed the thought from her mind. Out of respect for Asriel, she would keep that part of her journey to herself.

"Ah… not exactly."

"Not exactly?"

Sans was staring at the blank piece of paper almost pointedly so. "I dunno how much you know of the story exactly, but… well, you know a little of what happened to the Prince and Princess, right?" At Frisk's nod he continued. "Well, it's not for certain, but, ah… there's evidence that suggests that before she died, the Princess was an anomaly too. The first one ever to enter the Underground."

Frisk sat up, intrigued. "I knew she was Determined like me, but… she was an anomaly?"

"By all likelihood, yeah. She could Save and Reset just like you, and she probably did."

"Huh." Frisk let her gaze wander around the basement, thoughtful and intrigued. That made sense. It would help to explain why Flowey had mistaken her for his sister, Chara, for so long. She'd always assumed it was just because she and her looked alike, and because he'd missed her so badly, but if she'd had similar powers to Frisk's, it would only have gone to solidify Flowey's conviction.

"Anyway," Sans was saying, "so the human Princess Saved and Reloaded a bunch and then she died. But she wasn't the only anomaly the Underground had before you came around. There was one more." He lifted his eyes to Frisk again, expression unreadable. "Your little flower friend."

Frisk froze. "You know about him?"

"Hard to forget a guy who tries to squeeze ya to death with vines and absorbs your soul. Though I'll admit that memory's a little hazier than normal. I'd blame the soul-absorption. But nah, he'd been around for ages before you came around. And he had his fun.

"Kid. That flower dragged me through more timelines than I can count, or would care to. And he had me live through a lotta timelines I'd… really, really, rather not remember." For just a moment, his eyelights flickered out. "I don't know as much about him as I tried to learn, though. And far as I'm concerned, I'm probably better off not knowing. He's gone anyway.

"But the point, is that that flower had Determination. Which I gotta admit is still pretty interesting. See, the research I did determined one thing, heh – that something from within the Underground can't be an anomaly. That was never for certain, mind, but all the evidence sure pointed me in that direction. By all likelihood that's where Gaster went wrong with me." His expression turned briefly contemplative – frustrated, too. "So why Flowey? Hell, why a thing without a soul? An injection of the will to live shouldn't give sentience to a flower… "

"Dunkle Sans?" Frisk tugged at his sleeve. "You're getting off track."

"Hmm? Oh. Right. Sorry, kid." Sans blinked. "Just questions I never got answered. But I guess it don't matter. That flower's lost control of the timeline. It's down in the Underground, and it can stay stuck there for all of time for all I care."

An image flashed through Frisk's mind: Asriel, in her dream two nights ago, his body crumpling and withering into a tiny yellow flower. He was probably lonely down there. She said nothing.

"Anyway," Sans was saying. "So the Underground's had two anomalies. And they, especially that flower, had a real grand time of it messing with the timeline. And then… you came along.

"And listen, you're a good kid and all, Frisk, but… just how many times didja Reset?" He ambled on before she could answer. "Well, strictly speaking, you never Reset – I'd know if you had. You Reloaded, back to your Saves."

Frisk cocked her head to one side, curious. "What's the difference?"

Sans seemed to take a moment to digest her words, surely trying to think of a way to best explain it. "So when you Saved, you did it in a specific place at a specific time. A specific coordinate, a point in spacetime. Now you, an anomaly, you can jump around in the timeline, and while you got a fair bit o' wiggle room, you ain't got total freedom. Once you create a Save point, you've made a fixed point in time."

"What's a – "

"It means you can't go and change what happened before it. Say you made a mistake. Then, after ya made that mistake, you went and Saved. Well, now, that mistake you made's permanent. You can't travel back to before the mistake to fix it. When you jump back in time, you can't go any further back than your most recent Save.

"But you made all these Save points, right? You were Saving all over the place. Geez, how many Save points did you create, anyway?"

"A lot," Frisk shrugged.

"Yeah. Well." Sans tapped the end of his pencil against the table again. "You made these Save points, and then you jumped back to 'em, when you needed to."

"When I died," Frisk protested. "I went back when I died."

"Exactly. When you needed to. Will to live and all. So that jump in time back to your Save point? 's what's called a Reload. Going back in time and putting everyone back in the positions they were in at the exact point in time you made the Save. The Saving is just the fixing of that location in spacetime." He paused. "You understand this stuff?"

"So far."

"Right, good. Well, like I said, you Save, you create a fixed point in time. You can't go back. Unless you do one thing, one thing so powerful it can undo even fixed time." He hesitated. "A Reset."

"A Reset."

"Erasing your Save points. Undoing 'em. Undoing everything. Going all the way, way back to when you were first created."

"But if I – "

"Not when you were born," Sans interrupted. "Created as far as the Barrier – the Underground - is concerned. See, the Barrier did a funny thing for us monsters. In trapping us down there, it made a kinda… sub-universe. So every time you Reloaded, time on the Surface was unaffected. It kept going on as normal. All that messing with time remained in the Underground.

"When you came along, it was like a whole new lifeform came in outta nowhere. As far as the Underground is concerned, your creation." Sans cleared his throat. "That's what a Reset would do. Even now, up here on the Surface, you can't Save or Reload or any of that stuff anymore, right? But Resetting, undoing even all that fixed time, putting the Barrier back… that'd be… well. Quite something."

He wasn't looking at her, Frisk noted. She leaned over, and laid a hand over his. "You know I'd never do that, Dunkle Sans," she said quietly. "Right? Never ever."

Sans nodded, and flashed her a grin – too quick, too easy, formed too hastily for it to reach his eyes. "Anyway, want me to keep going? 'cause here's where things get real interestin'."

Frisk leaned a little closer. "What?"

"What I'm trying to figure out." He folded his hands behind his head, fingers laced together, and leaned back.

He was humouring her, Frisk knew. "What?!"

Sans sighed, then got up from his seat and joined her on the armchair. "… look, kiddo. All this messing-with-the-timeline business? Well, I ain't usin' messing lightly. When you… Reload, Save, and especially if you Reset… that power don't exactly… come without cost." He scratched the back of his head. "Hmm, lemme think of a way to explain… " His gaze went on to search the room until it fell once again on Frisk, and then he cocked his head to one side. "Here. Gimme your sweater."

Frisk frowned in puzzlement, but when he extended his hand, she shrugged and pulled it off so that she was just dressed in her T-shirt. Sans for his part took the sweater and held it up in front of him.

"Okay," he said. "So try and think o' the Underground as this sweater."

"The Underground… as my sweater?" Frisk raised her eyebrows.

"It's an analogy, just stick with me on this."

"What's an – " Frisk shook her head. "Okay, so pretend the Underground as my sweater. Dunkle Sans, I don't get it."

"Hey, stick with me. So pretend like the Underground is this sweater. Well, not so much the Underground. More like the stuff that makes the Underground up. Sorry for the confusion. Now, say you don't really like a part of your sweater too much. And you wanna repair it. So what you do is unravel some of the yarn – heya, don't worry, I'm not going to really – to a certain point." He pretended to tug at the thread of yarn and then stopped his hand in midair. "And just say, I dunno, there's some little knot in the needlework around here you can't really undo, so you can't unravel the sweater past that point." Sans tapped a random spot on the front of the sweater. "And then, using that very same yarn, you fix it. Re-knit it." There followed a hefty pause. "Undo, and rewrite time."

Frisk frowned, reaching out to stroke the wool with the ends of her fingers. "Okay. So that's what I was doing when I… " – her brain struggled to keep up – "Reloaded back to my Save files."

"Bingo!" Sans grinned at her, bopping her on the tip of the nose. "You're good at this. And now say you still don't like what you did. Maybe you wanna change the pattern a little. So you do it again." He repeated the previous motion. "And then, you fix it again.

"And pretend like you just keep doin' it, over, and over, and over. Again, and again, and again. And, well, that's gonna be pretty hard on your poor sweater. Eventually, it's not gonna be able to hold together no matter what you do. The sweater's gonna tear, and it's gonna fall apart." He returned it to Frisk, who frowned before tugging it back over her head. "It's gonna be… damaged."

"Damaged," Frisk repeated in a low murmur.

"Yeah. All that timeline business caused an awful lot of strain to spacetime in the Underground. To literally undo time and rewrite it… you can imagine, kid." Sans sighed and ran a hand down his face. "That kind o' power really should be used sparingly. 'cause see, here's the real issue: if you rewrite time, and change somethin' – even the tiniest thing – then it's like, what happened before never really happened in the first place.

"Now, there's some people who think that when you unravel the sweater and change something, the thread of yarn splits into two. That you make two universes. One where things went one way, and one where things went the other way, y'know? Hell, they think something like that happens every second anyone does anything. But Doctor Gaster pretty well disproved that. There's just one universe – only ever has been, only ever will be. And everything you do has got consequences, and they stay right within it.

"Let's use a big thing, just for the sake of argument. Say, I dunno, you saw your Monster Kid friend trip and fall off a cliff. And well, you didn't want that to happen to 'em, now, did you? You were awful upset. And lucky for you, you hadn't Saved yet. So you decided to go back to your old Save point – the last fixed point in spacetime ya made – and this time round, you made sure to be there and save them. And then the two of ya go on your merry way. Monster Kid never fell off the cliff anymore, so everything's fine and dandy, right?"

Frisk avoided his gaze. Did he know? There was no way of telling unless she asked, and she didn't really want to.

That had been one of the few times she'd jumped back to a Save point for reasons other than her own death.

She still remembered everything so clearly – standing on the precipice of that cliff in Waterfall, watching Monster Kid slip and land on a crumbling ledge, just low enough that they couldn't pull themselves up with their mouth. She remembered their cry for help – Yo, w-w-wait! Help! I tripped! She remembered the way Undyne had appeared in that very moment, before Frisk even had a chance to step forward and help.

And she remembered freezing on the spot in terror at the sight of the armoured Captain. And staying frozen on the spot even as Monster Kid continued to beg for her help.

It didn't matter that Undyne had saved them, in that timeline. Just as it didn't matter that she'd chosen that moment to go back to her old Save point – Reload – to make sure that she helped Monster Kid this time round. Frisk still felt beyond guilty for failing to help her friend and besides, Undyne had been hurt too.

It was Sans's voice that brought her back down to earth. "Kid? You okay? You following?"

"Yeah," Frisk spoke up, quickly pasting on a smile much like his a few minutes ago. "Sorry, um… what were you saying? After me going back to help them. Uh, hypo… hyper…"

"Hypothetically?" Sans shrugged. "Well, yeah. You'd think everything would be great then, right? You helped your friend so they didn't get hurt. Except they did get hurt. Because if they hadn't gotten hurt, then you woulda had no reason to go back and help them – and besides, you still remember it. There's like a… contradiction, now. And that's what's called a paradox."

"A paradox," Frisk repeated.

"Exactly. A contradiction. 'cause by all means, something like that shouldn't be able to happen. And paradoxes express themselves… through tears. Rips in the fabric of spacetime, if you understand." He glanced at her.

"I… I think so."

Sans cocked an eyebrow at her and grinned. "Y'know, you're pretty good at this. I'm impressed." Frisk grinned back, pleased, as he continued: "So if there's a tear in spacetime… you gotta ask yourself, well, what's on the other side of the tear?"

"Right."

"And the answer… is what's called the Void."

"The Void?" Frisk repeated.

He nodded curtly. "So everything in our universe – both this whole big one, and the little one in the Underground – has a fixed location in spacetime." He scratched the back of his head. "Like, you're Frisk, sitting on the armchair in the basement, at – " he glanced at the clock – "8:34pm. So say you stayed here, in the same spot, for an hour. Your location in space would be the same; but 'cause it was an hour later, your location in time woulda changed."

"Or say you napped," she teased.

Sans smirked. "Touché. But hey, you're right, it's definitely a more… likely example. Anyway, that make sense?"

"Uh-huh. You were a napping lazybones so your space, um, location didn't change, but your time location did because a whole hour went by. Lazybones."

"Papyrus is a bad influence on you," Sans grumbled teasingly, reaching over to ruffle her hair. "Anyway. Everything's got this point in spacetime that they occupy, right? You can show it through coordinates, and there's a lotta calculations and stuff that goes with that, but we don't need to get into that." Frisk was about to protest – she wanted to know – until she remembered seeing the calculations Sans had been doing, and thought better of it

"But I don't get what this has to do with – "

"With the Void? I'm getting there. Basically… the Void is nothing. It's the nothing outside the universe, outside time. It feeds off paradoxes. And that nothing is where… well, where Doctor Gaster fell. That's what was at the heart o' the CORE. And that's why he was erased. The energy of the Void ate him up." Frisk did not fail to notice the vaguely satisfied expression on Sans's face, nor the pain that lingered behind it all.

Frisk peeked up at him, thinking way back to what Sans had told her at Grillby's that afternoon. She ventured, "Dunkle Sans. The DT injections… they hurt, didn't they?"

Sans seemed to freeze for a second, and he made a motion as if to brush the question off. Then he deflated, like a punctured ball, and sighed. "Yeah," he said quietly. "They hurt a lot."

Frisk paused, then, impulsively, wrapped her arms around his waist and held him tight and close. She buried her nose in the fabric of his shirt.

Sans flinched.

Then, after a moment, he laughed weakly, drawing his arms around her, too. "Thanks, kid."

She didn't let go yet, but shifted to look up at him. "Dunkle Sans… if there's tears in, in spacetime that open into the Void – doesn't that mean he can come back?"

He stiffened. Eyelights went dark. "No," he said, and his tone was cold and forceful. "No. There's no way that could happen. Void doesn't work like that."

"But you said – "

"It can't happen, Frisk," he said, sharply. "So get that idea outta your head and shut up about it." He jerked from her grip. "Mind if we get back on topic?"

Frisk faltered. Then, "It's my fault, isn't it."

He stopped at that, turning his head to frown at her, brows knit together in a combination of incredulity and confusion. "What? No. No, course it's not."

"Yes, it is. I did those Saves and Reloads, and it made tears. I did it a lot. I… Asgore killed me so many times, and Mettaton too, and "

Sans cut her off swiftly. "Yeah, well, first off, you only did that to save your life, right? And even then – kiddo. Spacetime was fulla tears way, way before you got here. I'd been studying it for ages before you even came into the equation. The first two anomalies did tons of Reloads, and y'know, Doctor Gaster getting all eaten up by the Void caused some serious damage, too. More'n an anomaly could do with a hundred Resets."

"But I Saved too, I Reloaded too! It is my fault. I was the last one to do it! And I didn't even have to keep coming back after dying, I could have just let go and given up, it is my fault." Frisk found herself fighting tears.

"Kid. Kid." His hands settled firmly on her shoulders, and he looked her square in the eye. "Frisk. Listen." Frisk lifted her gaze hesitantly. "Listen, kid. It ain't your fault."

Frisk paused, then sighed. "Okay," she said.

She didn't believe him.

And she didn't believe that he saw her as entirely blameless, either.

Silence fell between them. Frisk's gaze wandered to stare at the strange machine, lips pressed together in thought, and Sans returned to his work. For a moment, the only sound was that of shuffling papers.

"That doesn't make sense," Frisk spoke up, suddenly.

Sans glanced up. "What doesn't?"

"That… he isn't coming back." She thought Sans might appreciate it if she didn't actually use Gaster's name. "From the Void. He's got to be. Or else nothing makes any sense."

His expression was all cocky defiance. "Oh? And why's that?"

Frisk took silent note of the sweat beading at his brow, and she only paused a moment before pressing on. "'cause then my dreams don't make sense. Or whatever happened this morning with the Void, when I got pulled in. If he's not coming back, what else could it be?"

"It's nothing," Sans said, too suddenly, with the careful tone of words rehearsed. "Just a bit of a Void leak. 's all. A tiny bit of energy leakin' from the Void I gotta deal with, and I dunno, maybe a bit of his essence is in there. But it can't do anythin'. It's nothing."

"Then why did the grey monster say 'beware?'" Frisk challenged.

Sans spun on her. His eyes flashed. "I. Don't. Know. But he can't. Come. Back. So stop. Asking."

Frisk flinched. "Okay," she said, quietly, eventually. "Okay."

She watched as Sans's shoulders sagged and he ran a hand down his face, shoving papers aside. "Sorry, kiddo. I'm just… on edge today. Don't worry. He can't come back. I dunno what your monster kid friend was saying. The Void can be funny sometimes. And… when bits of it leak out, stuff gets weird. You ain't in any real danger, okay? Promise."

"Okay," she repeated.

The grey monster had said they were in the Void. They had told her to beware of Doctor Gaster, and that Sans held the answers. Frisk believed all three were true. But she could also tell Sans was only giving her half of the answers he had.

He didn't seem to be sure of just how much he wanted to tell her, she reflected. Why tell her all about Gaster and his childhood and teach her about Saves and Reloads and anomalies if he was just going to conclude it all with a lie?

She was trying hard to be understanding. And she could be, to a degree. But she was getting scared, and that fear made it all the easier for her feelings to lend way to frustration.

If she was going to find out more, and uncover the truth about her dreams and visions, she'd just have to dig deeper, it would seem. She needed to be ready, though for what, she was not certain.

"So, kid," Sans woke her from yet another reverie. "'member how I was sayin', about needing your input?"

Frisk turned to him. "Yeah?"

"Well, now's that noble time." Sans searched his desk for a blank piece of paper, and, finding none, elected to tear one piece of paper in half that only had a bit of writing on it. "When you Saved – not Reloaded, Saved – d'you know just how many Save points you made?"

Frisk balked. "I don't know. A lot."

"More or less."

"I dunno. Thirty? But I went back to use them a lot, so I actually Saved more than… more than I made Save points, I guess."

Now it was Sans's turn to look puzzled. "Went back? You mean, if ya wanted to Save… you had to go back to some other point you already made? You couldn't just make a new one?"

Frisk shook her head. "I wish."

"Huh." Sans scribbled something down. "So – seein' as I never got to have a lengthy civil conversation with an anomaly before - how'd it even, you know, work?"

Frisk had never seen Sans this focused on anything before. His eyes held many emotions she struggled to place.

"I… I could do it when I felt especially determined. Usually there was a thing in the room that made me feel like that. That's why I think I felt determined again when I went back to visit it. Like… I made one Save point outside the Snowed Inn. Because that was the first thing I saw when I got to the village, and it was just so nice there, and friendly and cosy and homey, and that made me feel good. And more Determined. And when I went back there, it would remind me of it."

"Or… I could Save when I felt really scared. And when I felt scared, it made me feel more determined." Like before she fought Undyne, or Asgore.

"So it was involuntary. You weren't all that aware you were doin' it. You just kinda felt determined, and… that was that?"

"No. I used the Save stars."

Sans's pencil stopped. "Save stars?"

Frisk nodded. "That's what I called them. I mean, the first time I saw one I didn't know what I was doing. But I just touched it, and I guess I felt a little different. Then they showed up again and again when I felt determined, so… "

"You noticed the pattern," Sans finished. "Save stars. That's interesting… Doctor Gaster never mentioned anything about… " He trailed off, and his gaze wandered over to the basement window, near the ceiling. It was very dark out now, and Frisk knew from the TV it was meant to rain tonight. "So other parts of this are like he – we – figured. Your power came right outta being Determined. And if you, or your determination I guess, if that faltered… "

Frisk could always have just given up, if she wanted to. And if she had, then she would not have been able to come back.

"Dunkle Sans," she pressed, "what are you doing with this stuff?"

Sans had resumed tapping the end of his pencil against the table. "D'you figure those Save points are still there, with the Barrier gone?"

Frisk shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Well, even if you didn't, those locations might still … And you said you made one outside the Snowed Inn… " Sans reached over, brushing the tips of his phalanges over the machine. "Ah, forget this old thing. I guess I really gotta do it. No way around it."

"Do what? No way around what?"

"These readings." Sans picked up several of the sheets of paper covering his desk. "I gathered them in the years… well, you know. That your flower friend was doing his thing. I gathered them using this here machine. It was a pretty powerful thing, in its time. Could detect an anomaly by tracing irregularities and disturbances in the spacetime continuum and magical sphere." At Frisk's blank stare, he scratched the back of his skull and made a vague gesture as he tried to explain. "The Underground bein' all contained to one area as it was, it had its own kinda special energy signature, and when you started seeing an anomaly Saving and Reloading all over, the machine could pick up on that stuff. And I'm pretty sure I can't fix it on my own."

"What did happen to it?"

"Well, not much. Just, the critical circuits got fried and metal got a little melty. Problem is some o' the parts are back in the Underground. And I hope to hell – heck – that all those parts are in my workshop, and not... Please don't tell your mum I said hell in front of you. She's considerin' starting a swear jar."

Frisk thought Undyne would suffer more with a swear jar, but all she said was, "I won't, I promise." Pause. "Not where?"

Sans sighed, heavily. "… the Royal Labs."

"… oh."

"And see, thing is, there's other machinery down there too, that might be useful. I'd get a better read off the Void, if I used some o' the equipment down there." He winced. "His equipment."

"I didn't see anything Void-y when I visited Alphys's lab," Frisk put in helpfully. "Just the DT extractor."

Sans was fidgeting now, Frisk noted. "Nah. A bunch o' the labs got sort of cordoned off even before Al became Royal Scientist. Renovated, by some folks from the CORE. They're even bigger than what you saw, when you were down there. I'd need to blast down a couple walls. All that stuff oughta still be there. Once I bring the parts up, ya might be able to help me fix the machine. Might be fun, huh? You done any work with machines, kiddo?"

Frisk shook her head distractedly and crossed her arms over her chest. "And then what would you do?"

Sans fell silent. "Don't really know. I guess there's a chance I could… well, I sure wouldn't mind… "

From upstairs came the sound of the front door being kicked open, accompanied by a battle cry, making them both jump. Undyne was home.

Frisk was suddenly reminded of the fight that had taken place earlier between the brothers. "You know," she said, tilting her head to one side, "you weren't very nice to Uncle Papyrus, earlier."

There was a pause. Then Sans groaned, closing his eyes and throwing his head back. "Oh, geez. I really wasn't, was I?"

Frisk shook her head at him. "He's really upset," she provided. "You should go and apologise."

"Yeah. I will. I will. I didn't mean to… I was just, y'know… oh, boy. Let's go do that now." Sans dragged his hands down his face and got up from his seat. "Anyway, kid. You know to keep quiet about all this, don'tcha?"

She nodded solemnly.

He ruffled her hair on his way out of the basement. "Thanks, Frisk."

Frisk watched him go, then slowly lifted a hand to clutch at her chest. Her soul still hurt.

oOo

Frisk stopped to peek into Sans and Papyrus's room on her way to bed that night. The lights were out, and she saw both brothers curled up together in Papyrus's bed, Sans's arms wound tightly round his brother's waist. Frisk smiled a little to herself, then carried on to her own room.

That night she dreamed of nothing at all.

oOo

Sans woke up at 3am to feel Papyrus still pressed gently against him, sound asleep. Sans smiled slightly, carefully lifting an arm to reach up and stroke the side of his brother's face. He watched him for a long moment, then, slowly, tried to get out of bed without disturbing him.

It was a failed effort: Papyrus stirred as soon as Sans was sitting up, eye sockets sliding blearily open. "Sans?" he mumbled, his normally booming voice quiet and slurred with sleep.

Sans stopped on the spot and sighed, then ran a finger gently across his brother's cheekbone again. "Shhh. Go back to sleep, Paps."

Papyrus moved as if to sit up. "But where are you – "

"Shhh. Shhh." Sans put a hand to his sternum, gently pushing him back down. "Just getting a glass o' milk, I'm thirsty. I'm fine. I'll be right back."

"YOU, drinking milk, brother?" He scoffed. "Of your own VOLITION? When you are surely the most stubborn monster over drinking it in the history of monsterkind?"

"Yeah, well, maybe I've made a sudden change in character overnight. I'm actually considerin' going for a jog tomorrow before breakfast."

"I SEVERELY doubt that!"

"Go to sleep, babybones," Sans soothed, leaning over to tap his teeth against Papyrus's skull. "I'll be back soon, promise."

Papyrus looked as if he were going to protest, but he also looked tired; his eye sockets starting to slide shut. "Nyeh," was all he said at last, and Sans smiled, giving him another kiss before slipping out of bed and shuffling out into the hall.

Once there, he took a shortcut down to the basement, where he took a fresh bottle of ketchup out from behind the washing machine. He had to hide his stash or else Papyrus would probably confiscate it. It had certainly happened before. Afterward, he took a pad of paper and a pen, for the letter he planned on writing.

Then, he took another shortcut upstairs to the kitchen.

He unscrewed the lid off the ketchup bottle.

He opened the fridge and got out the bottle of wine that Toriel used for cooking.

He opened the wine, poured a small amount into the ketchup bottle, closed both containers. Returned the wine to the fridge, gave the spiked ketchup a shake, took a swig.

Sans pulled a face; he really wasn't a wine guy. Still, he leaned back against the counter, taking another sip.

He turned his head to the ceiling. There was a crack in the paint. He sighed, lifting the ketchup bottle as if in a toast.

"Well," he said aloud, "guess it's gonna be just like old times pretty soon, huh, Gaster?"