Something was wrong.

Sans wasn't just young, he was tiny, and everything felt strange. The coursing of magic through his body felt all wrong, burning and pricking, like electricity through water; dangerous.

He looked down, and the noise that tried to force itself into existence turned to a strangled cry in his throat.

His bones were gone. Or rather, his bones were hidden, flesh strung across muscles surrounded by blood and guts. His body had changed, it wasn't his anymore.

It wasn't a monster's body. It was a human body.

Sans was human. Not only that, he was young. He was a kid, basically a toddler, still in the universe he was born in. Before Gaster's experiments had dragged him from this world and stripped him of his humanity.

"Big brother!"

Sans froze at the voice. He turned, not sure if he wanted to see what he knew he would.

For a moment, Sans didn't recognise Papyrus. Not like this. This was before he was Papyrus, when they'd had human names and human bodies, human souls. But Papyrus-no, he wasn't Papyrus-was leaving no room for Sans to dwell on his mounting panic. He was pointing a finger, a finger covered in skin wrapped around bones Sans would recognise anywhere, over Sans' shoulder, already moving towards the elder brother.

"What's that?"

By the time Sans turned, Papyrus had almost reached the anomaly. Sans recognised the shifting and warping of reality as a portal to another universe, another dimension. How could he not recognise it? The moment Papyrus had touched it-his Papyrus, in his original timeline-they had both been sucked through, and ended up orphans without their memories.

Sans still worried Papyrus would remember one day, and never forgive him for keeping the truth from him.

"Don't touch it!" Sans yelled pulling Papyrus back by his shirt. "It's dangerous."

Papyrus suddenly got serious. "We should get mom and dad," he declared, already trudging off through the thick snow.

Why had they been out in the snow in the first place? It'd been so long, Sans couldn't remember.

The thought of seeing his parents made Sans' head swim. Just as he was beginning to entertain the possibility of staying in this reality, letting the other one sort itself out, everything went wrong.

When the anomaly began shifting, ripping itself apart to spread further out across the air, Sans knew what was happening. He'd lived through it, after all.

The entirety of the royal guard materialised, dropping down into the snow, completely fine. Monsters, it seemed, could travel through the void unaffected. Good to know, the logical, scientific part of Sans' mind supposed.

This wasn't Undyne's guard. This was the guard before her time, led by the woman's mother herself. They wouldn't be convinced of humanity's innocence so easily, or at all.

"Humans!" the leader cried, two spears materialising in her hands. It didn't matter to her that these humans were barely children; they were humans, and therefore they were enemies.

Sans couldn't reset fast enough. The last thing he saw in that reality was a spear hurtling towards his face, and another crashing into his brother's midsection.

All Sans was aware of was the floor rising to meet him, and a loud crack echoing through the space. There was panic constricting his chest, but Sans didn't react to the feeling of breathlessness filling the space in his ribcage.

Every single thing he tried ended in failure. Each reset took Sans further and further from Frisk's timelines; further from the life he'd had before. Each reset tangled the timelines, twisting them into an irrevocable mess.

No matter what Sans did, it always ended the same way. Everyone died, and Chara won.

"Sans!"

If anything could snap Sans out of it, his father's voice was it.

"What happened?" Gaster helped Sans to stand, and the younger skeleton realised he'd just collapsed in the middle of his father's old lab.

Maybe Sans had been going about this all wrong. For so long he'd been housing the secret of the timelines, suffering in silence and solitude as the people he loved died over and over again. Maybe, just once, he should share the burden.

"Dad, there's something I gotta tell you," Sans said.

A worried expression taking over his features, Gaster guided his son to a chair, taking a seat opposite him. He was acting equal parts the concerned father and inquisitive scientist, adopting a curious expression.

Sans figured the easiest way to get started was to show the visible evidence. The moment Sans unzipped his hoodie, spilling purple light from his determination-laden soul, it was as if a weight had been lifted from him.

He began speaking, first of Flowey, of his resets and the anomaly, and then of Frisk. Sans spoke of Chara, of pacifism and genocide, and finally, of Frisk.

Hell, he even told his dad about Toriel, and the reset he spent in the ruins with her and the six fallen children. And if he wasn't blushing while telling his father about his love affair with the currently married queen that was hundreds of years older than him.

In theory, anyway. Sans had stopped keeping track of his true age a long time ago.

"If what you say is true, there's still time," Gaster said. "The human child fell only yesterday."

Sans couldn't exactly blame his dad for having some difficulty swallowing the whole thing. It wasn't everyday your adolescent child sat you down and told you they'd been living in a repeating timeline for who knows how long, which they could only remember because a failed experiment had left them halfway outside the walls of reality, and that the human child who had just fallen would one day be responsible for the death of every monster in the underground a thousand times over.

Plus, there was the whole thing with Toriel. Sans was beginning to wonder if he should've left that bit out.

"We have to tell the king and queen to lock Chara up," Sans said. Gaster was still looking at him with scepticism, though it was fading. "They came here looking for a way to destroy all humans and monsters. Nothing we say or do is gonna change that, believe me I've tried."

Gaster took a moment longer to study his son's face. Whatever he saw there was clearly satisfactory, because the scientist nodded, rising from his chair and prompting Sans to do the same.

They had to find the royal family, and for better or worse convince them that Chara couldn't be trusted.