"Hello, brother" Papyrus called, walking into the house.
"Hey, Paps" Sans said, using the old nickname. "What's up"
"You should already know it, Sans" Papyrus said, leaning over. "A human came right by me. It was my chance to prove myself as a good candidate to join the Royal Guard. I would have been respected, and Undyne would have finally seen how worthwhile I was" Leaning closer to Sans, Papyrus spit out the facts. "But that didn't happen. The human escaped, and Undyne was humiliated as was I. No one has gained anything, and I have lost that opportunity. Do you have any idea why that happened?" Papyrus asked sarcastically.
Sans shouldn't have tried to get away with asking what was up. "Yeah" he said, admitting some facts. "The human was overprepared"
"That's not it at all, Sans" Papyrus suddenly yelled. Stomping his foot, he made his opinion clear as he could. "It's your fault! If you hadn't warned the human, then they wouldn't have been 'overprepared' as you put it. They would have been dead at my phalanges, and everything would be perfect!"
"How would having someone's blood on your hands be perfect?" Sans asked, curious.
"I don't care what they would have thought!" Papyrus thought. "They didn't respect me, you don't respect me, and no one takes me seriously at all" he complained, yelling. "That's all your fault to, you know" he added. "If you didn't introduce me as your little brother, then I would have a chance to make my own impression on people. If you wouldn't drive me to distraction with your tricks and jokes, then I could be level headed enough for people to look up to. If you weren't so popular, people would pay attention to me for once" he added, back to yelling. "And I'm not sure if you're doing it on purpose or not!"
Sans was stunned. Sure, he knew that Papyrus was a bit jealous of him, but he didn't expect it to be that far. "You really think that I'm holding you back?" He asked.
"Think it? I know that you're holding me back! If you weren't always however and doing your things, then I could have a chance to grow up and make my own reputation for myself!" he said.
Sans was stunned. He thought that he had just been looking out for Papyrus. Crippling his ability was the last thing that Sans wanted to do! "Alright" he said. "I can quit my job as a sentry" he said.
"What?" Papyrus asked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in tone.
"I can take up my job as a comedian full-time, and then I'll have almost as much as what the sentry job plus the part time comedian job got in total. You can start adding your money to the house's repairs, and that should even it out a little more" he continued.
"No, really, what are you talking about?" Papyrus asked, confused.
"I don't want to hold you back, bro" Sans said, honestly. "If me leaving the sentry job means that you don't think that's happening, I can do it" he added.
"You really…" Papyrus didn't know what to say.
"I'm serious, bro. The sentry job is great to work up into the royal guard, but I don't particularly want that. The comedian job won't be paying by five times my attack damage, so that will be better for us already, especially if you don't need to have me working nearby anymore" Sans said, getting up. "I'll start the paperwork right now" he said.
"I… thank you, brother" Papyrus said. He really hadn't anticipated this of all things happening. "I'm going to report to Undyne tomorrow, so I can bring any paperwork that you need to transfer then"
"Ok, bro" Sans called from the dresser. He wasn't sure where the filing cabinet had gone, but he vaguely remembered moving them a while ago.
Papyrus just kept watching. "You're really serious?" He asked.
"I thought that you already knew I liked my job in the comedy club" Sans said, trying to recall were he had the space to shove the cabinets, especially sense they weren't in his room.
"But… don't you like being a sentry?" Papyrus asked.
Sans rolled his eyes. "Not as much as you do, bro. I was planning to try and get into the job as Judge, but I don't want to steal your spotlight"
"Judge?" Papyrus asked. "But that's impossible to get into!"
"Not for me" Sans said. "You just have to have KARMA aptitude, and then you can work your way into it if you put in the effort. I was to busy trying to take care of you, but if I'm leaving the sentry post, then I don't get a chance to put that effort in regardless. I can manage with my job at the MTT restaurant, and there's no reason that I wouldn't like a full day of work instead of a half day of it"
"But you love your sentry job" Papyrus screamed, feeling like everything was wrong. "Anyone should be honored to get such a prestigious job!"
"Not if it means stifling you" Sans contradicted, remembering where he had moved the filing cabinets. "By the way, where did you but the stuff that was in the shed when you renovated it?"
"Do you mean the human jail?" Papyrus wondered.
"Yeah, that thing with the food bowl and bars you set up" Sans said. "That shed used to have a bunch of tools and stuff in it- do you have any idea where those went?" He asked.
"I think that you bought some wood for an expansion a few months later" Papyrus recalled, thinking about how upset he had been when his brother couldn't help him with the awesome jail he had made. He really had said a lot of stuff to him about the experience, and none of it was good. Papyrus started to remember just how much stuff he had thrown into the snow from the shed to do his renovations. "And there was a mess in the house a few… a long time before you moved the stuff out"
Sans smiled fondly. It had been rather trying to see his brother keep getting his equipment and stuff from their dad ruined. A lot of it had water damage, and Sans still hadn't managed to fix some of the things that he'd found in a drift. Most of them where- "Thanks Paps. I must have put them in the back room"
"The one that I'm not ever allowed to go in?" Papyrus asked, irritated.
"Yep, that's the one" Sans said. "It's not that I don't trust you, I just haven't finished repairing the water damage that it took"
"You mean that it used to work?" Papyrus wondered.
"More than work" Sans said, recalling fonder days. "Once upon a time that half finished pile of scraps could show you a different dimension"
"Like what?" Papyrus asked. He was curious, and that was almost enough to override the guilt over how much he had held back his brother instead of the other way around. "What did it show, Sans?" He asked.
"Lots of things" Sans answered, leading Papyrus to the back room. Passing a bunch of filing cabinets stacked against the side of the wall nearest the original house, Sans forgot his original purpose for being here in the excitement of getting to show off to his brother. "The machine was originally made with the intent of creating a portal to the surface, but the barrier curved it's path. Nothing can really get up out of the barrier- "
"But something already has!" Papyrus insisted. "Don't you remember what happened to the princes?"
"Oh, them" Sans said, in a far lesser mood. "That was a one-time occurrence, Paps. Prince Chara put their whole soul into finding a way to free us, and their soul carried a single-minded determination to get back up to the surface. When Asreal fused with Chara's soul and left, the whole kingdom's hearts beat with him. That much intent and magic unified… that's more than most individuals could ever have. Even if every monster other than them had fused with any other human soul, that wouldn't have worked. For all functional purposes, nothing gets through the barrier other than that much intent and power combined. For the purpose of machinery and powers that aren't giving their all to get out of the barrier and even most of the machinery that tries, nothing gets out of that barrier"
"What is it that we're trying to capture humans for, Sans? What is it that we're aiming for if not to get out?" Papyrus pushed.
"It's nothing so complex as that, Papy" Sans said, looking down. "We, meaning the King, hope that gathering the souls of humans will be able to power the underground. Getting out there is tricky, but we all need to give it our best efforts. We don't want to die down here…"
"But your actions say otherwise" Papyrus said. He was calling his brother out on it. "How is preparing the human to escape fallowing with your duty to the king, or any self-preservation at all?"
Looking down, Sans tried to find a justification for his actions. He failed. There was no good reason for him not to be giving his all to the cause the way that Papyrus was. He had nothing to say about the surface or freedom… other than one pitiful excuse. "You know what happened to our dad, right Pap?" he asked.
"He starved to death, just like so many other monsters that are trapped down here without any way to get food" Papyrus said, callous.
"That wasn't actually the whole of the matter" Sans said. "He was trying to care for both of us at the time, we were pretty silly back them, and when he realized what was happening to him, he tried to give us everything that he had left to sustain us a little longer"
"That was years ago, Sans" Papyrus said. "We've long outgrown any healing"
"It goes deeper than that" Sans said. "He gave me all of his passion for science, everything that he had learned. You got pretty much everything else"
"So, he's the reason why I'm so much stronger than you?" Papyrus asked.
"Well, yeah. He did fight in the war, and he got somewhat lucky a few times. That strength from battle was given to you, part of the other category. Even though you're a true citizen, I can't quite bring myself to think of any part of leaving other than what the methodology would be"
"That's the laziest excuse that I've ever heard" Papyrus said, dismissing the idea out of hand. Still, seeing the hurt that flashed across his brother's face, he tried to cheer him back up. "But what does that have to do with the machine?"
"This?" Sans said, flourishing a sheet off from a skeleton something that was more than half broken. "When it tried to open a view through space, using the theory of tesseract-based movement, it tried to- "
"Without the technical babble, if you don't mind" Papyrus asked, irritation marring his features.
"Ok, I can do that to" Sans said, rolling his eyes. "Nothing gets out of the barrier, so the machine refracted and looked at alternate universes instead"
"That's much better" Papyrus said. Pausing suddenly, a new thought struck him. "What's an alternate universe?"
"It's a place hard to access where something is different than here" Sans said, doing his best to simplify it. "It could be a possibility, like you eating something different for breakfast, or it could be something else. I really can't do more to explain it on such short notice"
"Ah, I get that- no wait, I don't" Papyrus said, looking down at his brother.
"If you couldn't understand then, I doubt that you'll be able to understand now" Sans said, shrugging helplessly. "I don't have any simpler way to describe it, and there's a whole lot more you can add to it and various theoretical applications…"
"I get it, just stop with the big words" Papyrus said, yelling again. "Stop treating trying to confound me"
"You just said two large words-"
"No more" Papyrus demanded. "Just fill out the paperwork so that I can do… something" he said, storming off.
Looking at the emptiness of an abandoned room, Sans let himself sink to the floor. Did Papyrus care about him at all? Was anything really going to make a difference if not even what he was doing now could satisfy him? "You're the type of person that won't ever be happy…" Sans started, thinking about everything that Papyrus asked for. "No, I won't believe it" Sans said, shaking the thought away. "I care about him, and Papyrus is better than that" he said, trying to make himself believe it. Why did he still feel so abandoned?