Tansy, a flower that was used as a declaration of war.
Time was a funny thing for Sans. He had grown so used to it stopping and starting, restarting and reforming day to day. It had lost meaning when Frisk had grown bored and only had worth when Frisk was happy.
But Frisk didn't have control over it anymore.
It was weird knowing that time would progress normally. He'd catch himself waking up thinking he was back in Snowdin. Most nights, if he managed to go to sleep, he'd be plagued with nightmares of a smiling child and a red scarf with no owner. Even after ten years he still had one of those dreams keeping him awake once in a while. You had made it easier to handle though.
You had made everything easier to handle.
You were just supposed to be another fallen human. After everything he'd gone through with Frisk, you were supposed to be an added problem. The older sister of a genocidal nine year old was only asking for trouble. Yet you brought peace that Sans never thought he'd ever see again. In the short amount of time you were in the Underground you had not only saved Frisk, but you had saved Monster kind, freeing them onto the surface without a single soul harmed.
You were an unpredictable force that scared Sans as much as you intrigued him. There hadn't been years of resets for him to get to know you and how you acted. Not having that history made you as likely to restart and take everything away from him as it was as likely for you to do nothing at all. Even after a year on the surface Sans was still getting used to you.
Living on the surface wasn't sunshine and rainbows. As kind as monster-kind was, the humans weren't ever going to be fully prepared for them. Sans seemed like the only monster ready for the hard facts of reality. He had expected you and Frisk to return to your surface family and leave the monsters to fend for themselves. That's why you had fought so hard to get to the surface after all, right?
He was beyond shocked when you convinced your mother to give Toriel guardianship over Frisk.
He was confused when you stayed with the monsters and out right called them, him, your family. He didn't understand why you rallied behind monster-kind, helping Frisk as the official ambassador. You talked to the town's Mayor, you had somehow convinced her to help move monsters onto the surface and to help them have normal lives. You became the number one supporter of all monsterkind and your voice was heard.
Time after time you proved your loyalty and love of your monster family. You never asked anything of them in return. Everyone tried to repay you for your unconditional love, but you were hesitant to even accept that.
Sans saw a lot of himself in you.
Maybe that's why you scared him so much.
The second year on the surface he realized that the fear he felt wasn't the same fear he felt when he noticed Frisk on the brink of one of their episodes. The fear he harbored was because he was realizing how much you meant to him.
How much you had grown on him.
How much he'd care if you suddenly left.
It was the end of that year when he clumsily asked you out. It surprised him how natural it was to be around you; with you.
It also surprised him how hard he was falling for you so quickly.
There were many things about you that he liked. There were a ton of things that he loved, too. However, the one thing that always stuck out the most was how undeniably determined you were to be kind. Even when riots broke out and you'd sometimes come home beat up and bruised, you smiled through it, not wanting your family to worry. You always put everyone else first because you loved with your entire being.
As much as he loved that about you, it was also something he hated the most.
Even after ten entire years on the surface, you never kicked that part of your personality. Even though Frisk was grown up and didn't need your protection, even when the monsters were fully integrated into society and didn't need your protective body shield, you still felt the need to be ready to sacrifice yourself.
You and Sans weren't perfect. The both of you still had nightmares of old trauma and old battles. It was easier with one another, but sometimes the uglier parts would rear their head. The two of you had been together for so long that usually you could pick up when something was beginning to bubble over.
That's why Sans knew something was wrong when he saw you on the Decade Anniversary of freedom. He could see it in your eyes when you ran into him. It was a familiar look of fear, something he usually only saw when the two of you were alone and you were coming out of a night terror. He saw it in the way your fingers trembled and how they grabbed at your other hands knuckles, a nervous tick you had had for ages. He played off that he noticed, knowing you'd come and talk to him about it when you were ready.
Because that was one thing he had learned about you. Whenever something was wrong, you needed to be given the chance to handle it yourself first, before you reached for help. You felt useless if you didn't even get the chance to breathe.
It scared him nonetheless.
That day, before he had to get Papyrus to carry your home, you had seen someone. You had heard someone.
He doesn't know why he knows that that was the beginning of it all, why that was the breaking point, but whatever you saw, whatever you walked towards that day before you broke down, was what caused everything that happened to you.
If only Sans could figure out what happened or who that was.
After that day you stopped seeing him. You looked at him with guilt and fear every time you saw one another. He tried to give you space, but having space between you two was new and wrong to him. It had been nearly a decade of being together and now, suddenly, you looked sick anytime he was near.
Everything about you was suddenly wrong. There were things that he knew you knew, that you stumbled over or blatantly forgot about. You would disappear for large stretches of time and when you were found again, you'd have no recollection of where you'd been.
You never said anything.
You didn't say anything was wrong, you never let on that there was anything to worry about. Most of the monsters weren't even aware of what was going on with you.
Sans had noticed. He was sure Papyrus had too. He'd been fretting over you ever since the Anniversary.
Maybe Sans had done something wrong. Maybe you'd become fed up with him. Too many nightmares, to many problems, too many fears.
It would've been easier if he could've just blamed himself for what was going on with you.. What had happened to you.
The day you disappeared he felt like his world had reset.
Even though he was giving you space, he still kept tabs. He made sure you were alive and okay and weren't breaking down alone. When he couldn't find you that day, he knew that he was too late. He didn't know he had a time limit or that there ever was one, but if there had been, because there had to have been, he had been late.
Maybe him confronting you in the kitchen at two in the morning was what drove you away.
Frisk and the Mayor conducted a town wide search, a mass amount of townsfolk volunteering to help look for you.
Sans knew he was the last one to see you. He tried finding any clues to where you could've gone after you ran out of his kitchen, but the newly fallen layer of snow hid any and everything. No footprints, nothing dropped, just an empty forest and a cold chill in his bones.
The town looked for a couple days before the volunteers started to drop. They had lives to get back too. The monsters close to you were the only ones who kept looking.
It was the afternoon of one of those longer days of searching. Sans, Papyrus, Frisk, and Toriel sat around the dining table. It was abnormally silent as the four of them sipped at the hot chocolate Toriel had made. She was one of the few who was asked to stay home in hopes you'd call or come back.
You hadn't.
"This is how she felt." Frisk signs abruptly. They don't look up at anyone, but everyone watches them. "This is how she felt when I ran away." Frisk doesn't elaborate further. They know the only person who knows exactly what they're talking about is Sans. Toriel just sighs and scoots her chair over so she can pull the weary nineteen year old into her side.
Sans watches the two hug.
"I miss her." Papyrus says, just above a whisper. Sans looks to his brother and his heart sinks at the painful look on his face. Paps tries to hide it but Sans grabs his brother's hand and holds it tightly.
"I miss her too, Paps." He says softly. Papyrus gives a shaky nod and then stands. He slips his hand from Sans and makes his way out of the room, most likely going to his room he'd been staying in since the search began.
Sans takes another look around the room and then stands himself. Frisk sends him a look, a pleading look to stay, but he can't.
He has something to do.
He takes a step and then short-cuts to his house. It's quiet and abandoned, and hadn't been used since him and his brother left to stay with everyone else. Instead of lingering, he heads out the front door and around the back.
Sans couldn't, wouldn't believe that you just up and ran away. He refused to think that after everything you'd done, after everything you had been through, that you would abandon everyone. That wasn't who you were, not after all the loss you had experienced yourself. Sans would've thought that someone had taken you. Alphys had even brought up the idea of a human holding you for ransom, like in the shows she watched, but no calls came in. Sans didn't think you'd so easily let someone kidnap you without at least leaving something behind. Plus, your disappearance was right when you were acting off and had run out on him. But he knew they wouldn't find you.
Because he couldn't feel you.
Your soul was just… gone. No matter how much he called out to it through his connection with you, there was no answer. At first he feared you'd broken your connection to him. In a panic he checked, only to find it as strong as ever. Sans had even asked Papyrus to tug on his soul link to you, hoping it would elicit some kind of reaction if somehow you were ignoring him, but even that was fruitless.
Though the connections were strong, your soul had just... disappeared.
Sans was trying to ignore the possibilities of why that was, but he could only come to one conclusion.
Sans brushes the snow away from the cellar door. When he grabs the handle to brace himself as he fishes out his key, the door pulls open-unlocked. His heart drops to his nonexistent gut as he slowly walks down into the dark.
He turns on the swinging bulb overhead, bathing the cellar in a stale orange light. He slowly surveys the room, making sure no monster had snuck in. He didn't know why his cellar was unlocked, but he had a horrible feeling it was connected to you.
The machine in the back of the room is uncovered, the tarp thrown carelessly to the side. The machine hums, obviously more on that it had been when he last left it unplugged and powered down. He hadn't even gotten around to testing it yet, but there it was, very much on and working.
He's across the room, hands on the warm machine, checking the screen to see if he can uncover if it was really working. Had you accidentally stumbled down the cellar and found it? Accidently turned it on with your Determination?
There's no way. You couldn't have gotten into the cellar by yourself, let alone started up a machine in a language you didn't even know. Someone had to have helped you-but who? The only monster who knew of this cellar was Sans. Not another soul knew. So you must have but… How? Why? Had it really been an accident?
The machine doesn't answer his commands he types in. In fact, it's frozen up, loading and working on it's current input, not allowing any change until it's finished with its current task.
It's current task being to hold onto something crossing over into a different reality.
Was it… You? Or was it malfunctioning?
Sans immediately begins typing, looking for a way to pull whatever was out back in. If he could reverse the program, he'd be able to bring you back-if it was you.
Just as he's about to enter the command he feels a hand on his shoulder.
"You will kill her."
Sans spins around, eye blazing blue, hand outstretched ready to attack whoever had gotten into his cellar.
There's no one there.
He takes a shaky breath, feeling sweat begin to bead on his skull.
He swore he had just heard; just felt-
"If you bring her back now, it will most certainly lead to her death." Sans flinches back at the voice. It sends a cold chill down his spine. As much as Sans was positive he was hearing a voice, he knew deep down he wasn't hearing it out loud. The voice bounced around in his skull, making his mind foggy.
This time, seeing a flicker of a shadow next to him, he reaches out.
His hand touches something cold and yet hot, dry and rough to the touch, but also as if he was dipping his hand into a thick liquid.
The figure bubbles into existence, wide, empty eye sockets staring at Sans's hand on him.
Suddenly Sans can't breathe.
"...Dr. Gaster?"
The dark city you're in isn't one you recognize. For a moment you think that maybe, somehow, you were back on the surface. Looking up though, into the dark never ending void that could only mean there was a cave ceiling far above your head, nipped that hope in the bud. The city around you was full of black and grey buildings. Everything was monochrome and void of color. Honestly, it was unsettling. You'd never seen a place like this before. It didn't fit into the colorful memory you had of all the places you'd visited in the Underground before. It felt like this city was in an eternal night.
You hear footsteps skid off to your side, echoing from down an alleyway. As you back away from it, there's more footsteps on the other side, down the road. The echo unnerves you, since it'd been so quiet since you arrived. You couldn't tell if they were footsteps of a monster growing closer or just of a random passerby.
Moving to the side of one of the many buildings, you get out from the middle of the street. You decide to pick a direction and to start walking, hoping you'll eventually come across some kind of hint as to where you were. This place already felt a million times more dangerous than the last. You could practically feel the hostility in the air.
Your soul throbs and you wonder if what you were feeling was less of an assumption and more of a real thing.
A murmur in the distance catches your attention. Quickly the dull noise turns into speech and you catch a conversation as you turn the corner. You slow down, keeping quiet as you press yourself against the wall into the shadows.
"Now, I don' think ya heard me right." Says a raspy baritone voice. Immediately you think it sounds kinda like Sans. Sans's voice was low, but not that low, nor was it ever so gruff. You think you hear more of an accent to it, but you're not too sure. What you are sure of is the way the voice sends a shiver down your spine.
"Now c-c'mon Sans, don't be like that!" So it was Sans. This other voice, though, you really don't recognize. You inch closer to the corner and peek your head around.
Before you are two monsters. One, a white rabbit, was backed up against the wall with their hands up, while the other was leaned in close, boney hands fisting the front of the rabbits shirt.
This Sans looks like he took a walk through hottopic and had a punk phase that he never quite got out of. He had a large black hoodie on, lined with grey fur that seemed to be moving. There were gold chains hanging off and around black and gold striped mesh shorts, rusted spikes detailing his pockets. Even his shoes were "edgy", black and red converses looking stained, dirty, and again detailed with more darkly colored spikes. His form is bulkier than you remembered your Sans being. If you didn't know he was a skeleton under all those layers you would've believed he was packing muscle.
"Boss said ta pay up or ya group n' you won't be safe no more." Sans lifted the taller rabbit off their feet. "An' I don't see no gold." The rabbit withered against the wall, a look of twisted fear wringing his face. You felt your heart thump against your ribcage as you watched.
"W-We can't get that kinda gold in this, hah, kinda economy Sans! C'mon, give us more time! Ya know the Bunbuns are good for it!" A red light flickers on, lighting the rabbits face. He yelps and struggles more. This time you feel your soul tug as Sans raises his gloved hand and starts to wrap it around the monster's throat.
You couldn't just stand there and watch.
Backing up you look around the street for something, anything that could help you.
Finding a littered glass bottle, you pick it up.
Without much more thought, you throw the bottle as far as you can across the street. You cheer internally when it shatters inside the adjacent alley.
"Who's there?" You hear Sans say, but then he grunts and you flatten against the wall as you hear a scuffle. Seconds later the rabbit is sprinting past you, hightailing it. Sans curses colorfully at the same time you breathe a sigh of relief.
You blink and Sans is across from you, down the street in the alley where you had thrown the bottle. He looked like he was investigating the noise, but his back was to you. You suck in a sharp breath and quietly begin backing away. Maybe you could slip out of sight and away from before he noticed. As much as your soul yearned to talk to him, because he was Sans, you knew Sans, your soul was also aware of the bloodthirst rolling off of him in waves. Either it was an instinctual fear or your Kind soul was reading that emotion.
You didn't want to test it. Not yet. Not without some form of protection.
Glancing behind you, you see you're nearly out of the alley. Just as you're filled with relief, there's a chime from under your foot and your heart plummets. Looking down you see a small dog collar you've stepped on, the bell in it having jingled when it was crushed.
You whip your head back around to look for Sans, to see if he noticed…. But he was gone.
You stumble back, looking around and straining to hear the skeleton. Had he gone off after finding nothing? Maybe you were in the clear-
"Looks like we have a lil' rat." You flinch at the rough voice in your ear. You whirl around, jumping back to put space between you and the glaring skeleton. Being face to face, his eye light flickers and his glare lessens just a smidgen. "A human rat?" He snickers. "Didn' think they came in your size."
"Who're you?" You ask, playing the innocent card. You didn't want this time-line ending up with you being found out so easily, like with Papyrus. That made everything too complicated too quickly.
"Sans. Sans the skeleton." He doesn't reach out his hand in greeting. Instead he just keeps looking you over with his one red eye, as if trying to figure something out. Being this close to him you notice that he's wearing a woven red sweater under his coat, giving him that extra bulk. However, he definitely was taller and broader than the Sans you knew. This skeleton definitely had more marks and chips along his skull too.
You give him your name and his grin curls.
"Nice ta meet ya, doll. Y'ur pretty far out here, how long ya been down here?" He's watching you carefully. You feel like he knows something you don't.
How far were you from the ruins? If you knew where you were that'd help you lie a lot easier.
"I don't know where here is." You say, deciding to play innocent and dumb. The more he thought you didn't know, hopefully the more he'd explain. That and you really didn't know anything of this Underground. Not in this reality at least.
Sans grin only grows more at your supposed ignorance.
"Then lemme explain somethin' to ya doll. This here is the Underground, New Home. A shit nightmare if ya ask most anyone." He waves a hand around you. New Home, he said? Wasn't that the capital? You were so far from the ruins where humans always fell, no wonder he was giving you looks. "Only the strong survive an' the weak get dusted." His eye light flickers out and you take an instinctual step back. "Down here it's kill or be killed and, doll, I'm bouta have a good time."
Your soul is ripped from your chest unceremoniously. Sans only pauses a second at the sight of your green, red cracked soul, before he throws his arm out. The ground moving under your feet is your only warning before a bed of broken, sharp bones shoot up towards you. You back peddle just in time to avoid being skewered alive, but the slope of the newly deformed road sends you back on your ass. Sans looms over you, grin sharp and too wide. In his row of shark-like teeth you see one golden tooth protruding. It glints in the streetlight and you swear you can see your own small, scared reflection.
You also see a pile of trash and a few bottles behind you.
"Usually that gets 'em." Sans comments. He looks morbidly excited that you were still alive. "This isn't ya first time, is it doll?" You keep your scared look as you crawl back, moving every time he takes a threatening step forward. You realize that he likes you looking scared and helpless.
That pisses you off.
Sans reaches out again to summon more bones, progressively looking more and more excited the longer you avoided his attacks, but this time you don't just dodge.
Your hand knocks into a glass bottle and, with the grace of someone who'd been in one too many fights growing up, you bounce to your feet and rush the skeleton. He looks surprised as you barrel into his personal space. Knowing how his shortcutting worked, you twist your fingers into his oversized coat so he couldn't leave you.
At this point you can see the fear in his eye as you raise the bottle. Red sweat glints on his temple and you're sure he thinks you're about to strike him.
You don't.
Even if this Sans was trying to kill you, even if he had, you couldn't bring yourself to even hit him. Maybe it was because he looked like Sans, maybe it was because you'd grown too kind over the years. Or maybe it was because in the back of your mind you knew if you hit him, even once, it'd be the end.
Instead, you stuff the bottle into his eye socket.
Sans makes a funny noise as he flinches away from you. His hands go to the bottle, trying to dislodge it.
You don't stay long enough to see if he does. The moment you knew it didn't actually hurt him was the same moment you chose to turn and sprint away like your life depended on it. In this reality you're sure it did.
Sans yells colorful curses at your back, but they soon die away as you weave through alleys and streets, trying to make an escape.
You only slow down when the city starts to crumble away into an empty cave. You assume it's the barren outskirts of the Underground. Much further out you guess you'd find dirt walls that led up until they vanished into the cavern ceiling. The only way to really escape was to head back towards the capital and find the elevator that leads down to the Core.
That sounded a lot easier than you knew it had to be.
Deciding to take a breather you lean up against one of the buildings. You rub your dry and scratched up hands together, trying to bring some kind of warmth to your digits. The city was chilly, chiller than you expected since it was so seemingly close to Hotland.
Maybe now was a good time to decide which area you'd most likely find the next piece of Gaster-
What was that?
You turn at the noise of pebbles bouncing on the ground. The street next to you was empty, but the sudden sound made your paranoia creep. They must've fallen from the ceiling or something. Weird.
This time while you're looking at the road there's the same sound on your other side. You spin, foot skidding back, ready to propel yourself down the road if it was Sans or someone else ready to be at your throat. But again, nothing.
There's a buzzing in your head. The world starts to fall around you.
"You're k-kinda har-hard to find." The voice isn't stuttering. No, it sounds like his voice was restarting in itself, glitching in and out of time as he tried to make his voice heard.
You didn't know who 'he' was, but the moment you heard him you felt a swell of hopelessness.
"Not too-oo hard tho-though."
You can't focus on anything around you. When you try to, your sight picks up glitches and movement that you knew couldn't be real. It was like when you stumbled around in the last world's Waterfall. You don't know why it was happening again or what it had to do with this voice, but you knew it was bad.
This was bad.
You feel something hot wrap around your wrist but you tug it free in a panic. You whirl around, trying to find the monster trying to corner you, but you just see more oozes of colorful glitches. Looking at them for too long hurt your eyes.
"Why're ya ma-makin' thisss so-oo hard?" The voice grunts and you feel something ghost against your back. He yelps and then the glitches start to fade. "Ha-ang on. What're ya doin'?" He sounds like he's struggling against something.
Then you see him.
For a brief second, in one of the colorful stains of a glitch in front of you, as if it was a window, you see the twisted face of… Sans? It must've been Sans but… His bones were blackened and had a pearly sheen to them as if he was in a constant panic sweat. His usual eye sockets were filled with an intense red and blue, wobbling streaks ran down his cheek bones. His clothes were black and shiney, as if they were some kind of liquid rather than cloth.
His yellow pinpricks found your eyes on him and his toothy skeletal frown pinched into a twisted smile. He reaches his hands out towards you, wires of all kinds wrapped around his arms and hands like the layout of muscles. They unweave to aim at you.
For some reason you knew that if he got a hold of you, he'd be able to do worse than just kill you.
Then the glitch snaps shut. It blinks out of existence like a television being turned off. All at once the world is back to normal and all you hear is your own breathing.
Who was that?
What was that?
A shock of fear shakes you. You feel nauseous at the idea of that new skeleton. If he could do that to a world, as if he was in the machine holding you in this reality, you didn't want to find out what he could do to you.
You start to back up, ready to charge the capital to get to the core and the hell out of this reality, when you feel a cold wind.
There was no wind in the Underground.
It's a shadow at your side, casted by whoever just appeared behind you. Then it's the coldness of bones on the back of your neck.
For a moment you're sure the glitchy skeleton had come back.
"AND HERE I THOUGHT THE HUMAN WHO FOOLED MY BROTHER WOULD BE HARDER TO CATCH."
"Papyrus?" You manage to get out just before your world goes dark.
