There are days when the homesickness physically hurts, like there's something alive inside Sans again and it's clawing at his ribs to escape. He had a home and a brother and friends, but this place isn't that place, these people aren't those people, and the Papyrus of this world isn't his brother—siblings aren't like replacement socks, you can't just grab one from one pair and one from another and put them together and have them match.

Sans pesters Papyrus anyway and jokes around with the other guy, and he nods when they tell people he's their brother, because it's easier than making a fuss over nothing and it makes them both happy. In his nightmares he sees a dusty Underground, or worse, a place overflowing with more parasites, teeming with the obscene offspring of the thing that had lived in his skull, all of them bouncing around with poofs of color and feigned goofy friendliness, wearing the bodies of the people he loves. When he's awake, he imagines an Underground exactly as it has been, except that he's gone. The Sans and Papyrus of this world use the words brother and twin, and instead of familial warmth he feels a cold knot in his ribs. He wonders if his own brother and their friends ever met their own version of Frisk, and whether they ever talk to them about that lazybones brother of Papyrus who disappeared one day.

He'll never get to explain what happened. He'll never know if his friends and brother are even alive, because he's never going home. He's never going home. That machine is broken and he has no power of his own to jump between worlds. He's stranded and never going home. Never, never, never.

Maybe he's healing and it just doesn't feel that way yet. And some days are better than others; sometimes he feels downright contented. But he aches.

A human girl is staring at Sans and Frisk, sitting with one leg folded over the other and her purse cradled on her lap like a beloved pet.

"Hey," she says too loudly, overcompensating for the hum of all the others around her on the bus. "Aren't you..?"

Frisk nods before she can finish her question. Their face has been plastered all over newspapers and TV screens for months, all those photos of them descending from the mountain like a tiny prophet with an entourage of monsters at their heels. They've grown almost an inch taller since then, there's a shiny black barrette in their hair to hold their long bangs out of their face, and their sweater is new, but somebody always recognizes them whenever they go out. Their first day of school was a real chore.

"Whoa, cool! I've heard all about you, in the news and stuff. Where are you guys going?"

The girl is leaning in too close for Sans' liking, she's on one of those sideway-facing seats and her legs are long enough that her knees almost brushing against him, and the rest of the bus is so packed with humans that he's got nowhere to go unless he wants to try the window. harmless, he reminds himself. she's harmless. The girl looks 19 or 20, there's a bus stop by the campus so she's probably a student on her way to class. harmless. And she's a complete stranger. But the thing in his skull enjoyed the company of all kinds of humans, all of them strangers, and Sans can't remember what any of them looked like...

Frisk's hand slides over to where he's gripping the edge of the bus seat, their warm, stubby kid-fingers wrapping around the skinny phalanges. They're speaking in that calm way that they have, explaining that the two of them are going to visit a special friend. The words blend together.

The girl nods slowly. She had been excited to see Frisk, but their skeleton friend went tense and quiet for no reason she can discern, and she's not as clueless as first impressions might have suggested, even if she has no idea what she did wrong. Monsters are fragile compared to humans, she's heard, so she assumes that Frisk's skeleton friend thinks she wants to hurt him. It's an awkward realization.

"Right. Well, that's cool." The girl might have asked for a photo op, but decides against it. She back in her seat to look out the window with her purse hugged to her chest.

When they get off the bus at the city's outskirts, Frisk is still holding Sans' hand. He's sweating, which feels a little funny since he doesn't have skin, and he's trembling a little. He doesn't do that so much anymore unless he's stressed. Frisk gives his hand a squeeze.

helluva pair we make, Sans thinks dully, as the tall buildings overhead give way to trees. a monster scared to death of half the humans he sees, and a human who's been killed by half the monsters they've met. Frisk was willing to forgive Toriel for whatever she might have done to keep them in the RUINS, but they keep their distance from the other Sans and flinch away from Undyne whenever she's around. They would react to Asgore in the same way if Toriel ever let the king near them.

Golden flowers and tiny green seedlings spill out around the mountain path beyond where the barrier had been, escapees from Asgore's garden. Until Frisk's fall, the flowers had been thought to have been extinct for nearly a hundred years, ever since the places where they grew were all dug up or paved over as a small village became the town which would one day become Ebott. In a few more months, they might completely engulf the hillside. The idea of that makes Frisk smile. It makes them a little sad, too. The flowers remind them of the kid's voice that had whispered in their ear throughout their adventure in the Underground, only to disappear as soon as they left. Part of Frisk hoped they might hear it again once they went back, but it never did.

The Riverperson came back, though. Frisk always sees them paddling up and down the rivers near Ebott, or sometimes showing up to confuse the lifeguards at the local public pool, but whenever Frisk and Sans return to the Underground, the Riverperson is there too, as if they can sense exactly when and where they're needed. They seem to know a lot of mysterious things. When Frisk first took a ride on their boat, the Riverperson made a strange comment about the man who came from the other world. And sang a song about mushrooms.

Frisk and Sans usually part ways in Snowdin so he can hang out while he waits for them, but today he asks to stop at Waterfall. Sans gives a lazy salute as the kid drifts off on the Riverperson's boat, then strolls to the garbage dump. If Frisk had their way, the two of them would stick together, but they tried that once and Flowey refused to show his face no matter how long they waited.

Sans picks his way between the broken bicycles, soggy piles of old phone books, plastic scraps and discarded toys and all the other human detritus. The water pushes and tugs at his legs as he walks in the direction it wants him to go, his stride shortening into delicate little kitty-cat steps around the chunks of garbage and as close to the edge as he dares. The toes of his sneakers rest on nothing; he leans forward just enough to see past the veil of mist around the falling water, straight down, into the utter blackness of the abyss.

"hey," he whispers, as if to an old friend. "howzit going down there?"

This is the place where the other guy got rid of the dead parasite, so he says. By his account, the resident lazybones had arrived home from his shift at the sentry station to discover that Papyrus had locked himself in his bedroom with... himself, and that there was a little starfish thing lying dead on the floor, its carcass having turned the color and texture of a rotten crab apple as its internal fluids seeped into the carpet. Once he and Papyrus figured out some semblance of what was going on, the guy had tossed the dead parasite into a bucket, into the shed, and then, later, into the abyss.

suffice to say, he later added, cheerfully. cleaning THAT off the carpet was a real delight. if you ever feel insecure about whether or not we really like you, just remember that we kept you around even after that mess.

"it's amazing to consider. you were the one in control... you had complete power in our situation... and you botched it. got yourself murked by alphys, of all people. don't get me wrong, i love her dearly, but... c'mon, alphys? that's some next-level incompetence."

Sans pauses. The water is pushing against the back of his legs, trying to nudge him along. He stands still.

"so, here we are. you're dead. despite everything you did to me, i'm not. sucks to suck, huh?"

He stares down into the darkness without quite knowing what he's waiting for. The last thing he wants to hear is the parasite talking back to him from beyond the grave.

Sans sighs, turns away from the edge, and goes over to sit on an old CRT TV with a crunched-in screen. He's been told he should feel proud for surviving, but he's only alive because that thing kept him alive. If it had been quicker to realize it was doomed, maybe it would've taken him down with it, killing him as the parasitic equivalent of driving your car off a cliff because the cops are about to catch you. But it didn't. So he's alive. What is there to be proud about?

He looks down at the water. He should've taken off his shoes before he waded in here; he'll get blisters from walking home in wet socks. heh heh.

"i don't mourn for you. sick freak. and i will never forgive you. if i'm unhappy about anything, it's that i can't personally kill you. but before i hypothetically got around to doing that, there are questions i wish i could've asked... if i had some guarantee that your answers were truthful, anyway."

Sans closes his eyes, then feels a twinge of unease and opens them. that thing is dead, he reminds himself. dead and gone. it can't hurt anyone.

"i wish i knew how many others you took before me. i doubt i was the first," he says. "how many other guys like me... or if not 'me', who else?" He doesn't put much stock in prayer, but he silently hopes that the thing's other victims are at peace now, wherever they are. He hopes somebody found them after they died and scattered the dust somewhere beautiful, because none of them deserved what they got, for worse or better: Sans was a goofy lazybones with a mildly edgy aesthetic to his magic who never did anything to earn himself a miracle, and the guys or girls or whoever else that came before him couldn't have done anything bad enough to justify being dragged away from their homes and slowly tortured to death.

dead, dead, that thing is dead. it got what it deserved. it suffered. not for long enough, but it suffered.

"i would be ok with never seeing them again. my brother. my friends. any of them. as long as i could be certain that they were safe."

The water goes on rushing past him. It isn't going to answer, any more than the dead parasite will. He swallows, however that works.

"speaking of which. it would also be nice to know exactly how many people you used me to hurt, and... in what ways. your whole 'consent' schtick... it couldn't have been a complete lie, in every instance... could it? seems like i would have remembered that. or somebody would've killed us for revenge afterward. right?"

It's not impossible that he might have misinterpreted or forgotten certain experiences through the numbing fog of pain and dissociation, and the parasite never let a pesky little thing like moralitystop it from doing what it wanted, but the scenario he's thinking about is so horrifying that it trips some kind of mental circuit breaker and leaves surprisingly little impression in a subconscious mind that's been primed for clinging to all the worst possible assumptions. If he harbored any real suspicion that the parasite controlling his body had forced him to be complicit in that, he would jump over the edge of this waterfall and join the thing in hell. Then the people who've all been so unreasonably nice to him would feel sad.

On cue, the thought goes away, and he sits there feeling not much of anything. Just blank and hollow inside.

"alphys has been seeing this human shrink, so i've heard. seems like it's been good for her. plus she's relieved to not have to deal with a basement full of undead folks anymore. this may surprise you, but normal people are distressed by the suffering of others. compassion... empathy... ever heard of 'em?" Sans kicks a splash of water toward the edge of the abyss. "she seems to think i should follow her lead. uh, with regard to talking to somebody. not the botched science experiments."

He has to admit, getting to freely spill his guts to somebody has its appeal, and there aren't any good candidates within his existing social circle. Papyrus or Undyne or Alphys are willing to listen, or so they think, but their minds might change if they had any idea of what he had to say. His "twin" had seemed open to letting him talk, but when Sans merely hinted at some of what that thing did with his body, the guy was completely freaked out and revolted. Papyrus would be even more upset, Undyne would blame herself, and Alphys—well, back in the Underground, Alphys would've had an anxiety attack, and nowadays her suggestion is therapy. She might be right. It might go better with somebody whose literal job it is to listen to people discuss their messed-up lives.

What would he tell them, though? How would he explain it, and how long would that take? He imagines himself strolling into some shrink's office, flopping down on the couch and gunning it before they can get a word in edgewise. yeah so i used to live in an alternate dimension until this starfish thing crawled inside my skull and seized control so it could go on fun meta-universe adventures while wearing me and i survived but i'm never going to see my friends or my brother ever again and on a rational level i know they're most likely alive because there's no specific reason to think they're dead but i don't know for sure and if they WERE killed then it was by my own hands so basically yikes also that thing fed on my SOUL which hurt to a degree i couldn't verbally express to you except by screaming, how can i begin to describe what it was like? i was in so much pain that i would have gratefully welcomed death but the thing kept me alive and there were guys around all the time and i knew that they knew that thing was in control and some of them were friendly and others used words like "abomination" but they were always speaking to it not to me, i tried to signal for help but it never worked and then i was too weak to do anything except wait for it to be over, the loneliness was crushing. the loneliness and boredom. you wouldn't think you could get bored of agony but you can especially when there's nothing you can do but take it, alone and unable to cry out or move as you watch the world going on without you with no hope of receiving help or comfort because everyone acts like you aren't even there and that was just the baseline state of my existence, the thing used me as a puppet as it killed people and tried to infect other worlds with its parasitic offspring and looking back i guess i can kinda rationalize some of the killing as self-defense but i hope with all my janky little heart that it never succeeded at reproducing because it would be partially my fault and the guilt would destroy me oh and speaking of egregious violations of my bodily integrity that thing enjoyed getting all kissy and snuggly with my fellow clones or with whatever random faceless humans caught its eye and that led exactly whereyou'd imagine—yeah i'm literally a skeleton yeah boning is physically doable no i'm not telling you how, use your imagination wait no actually don't, eww—and they all KNEW that thing was wearing me it was unmistakable once those stupid sunglasses came off but they didn't care enough to say anything or maybe that was the point you know like they specifically got their rocks off on the idea of their little starfish pal pleasuring them with the body of its helpless torture victim and/or they liked touching someone who couldn't push them away and hey i did mention just now that i was bored of being in constant agony from my SOUL getting gnawed on so i guess it was something different when they...

(Sans feels queasy. Even he can't make certain topics funny.)

...i never said yes to anything they never asked or if they did then my answer was given under duress the thing might have asked me once just so it could say that it had my consent in case anybody ever cared enough to want to know, i don't remember anything like that but it could've happened, that thing had an obsession with acting all wholesome and PG even though it was actually a heartless sadist so maybe it asked and i said ok because i thought i could appease it by saying what it wanted to hear, maybe that happened but then i forgot. my memory's patchy. but this IS all real, the things i remember, they happened, only sometimes i lie awake at night afraid that i'll suddenly also remember inviting that thing to climb into my skull and do whatever it wanted so it would turn out that i actually have no right to complain because it was all justified and all my own fault for committing the number one most boneheaded move of my entire life by saying yes and then forgetting afterward and playing the victim when i actually brought it all upon myself, or something, i don't know and i never used to be a serious type of person i was just some weird lazy guy who told jokes and played pranks and collected socks and napped on the job and i was content with that, i don't know what the hell happened, oh by the way my SOUL is permanently busted (it used to look even worse than it does now, can you believe it?) which might have all kinds of wacky long-term health implications down the line and the human 18-24 year old demographic scares the hell out of me because i can't shake the feeling that they all secretly have a fetish for necrophilia-flavored sadistic tentacle-molestation-by-proxy scenarios, i'm objectively extraneous because cloning, lol, and i would never do it but sometimes i think about doing something bad to the guy who's kinda my twin now or i guess myself because we're the same person i have some convoluted daddy issues unrelated to all this and hey if you wanna see me flip out then throw a furby at me because that starfish thing, i forgot to mention, it had a real fun aesthetic.

Sans normally loves to waste people's time and make them laugh, but not like this. They would laugh. Maybe it would be incredulous laughter, because his story is completely nuts, or maybe it would be uncomfortable laughter because it's so sick and twisted regardless of whether they believe it's actually true. One way or another, they would laugh and he would slink away feeling dirty and humiliated all over again. Hard pass.

He stretches out his legs and lets his soggy sneakers splash in the water. The mist from the falls beads on his skull and a hunk of yellow foam like something from inside an old car seat floats past; he angles his foot to scoop the thing up, studies it, then flicks it over the edge of the abyss. He isn't going to come back to this dump again, he decides. Whatever he's looking for, it isn't here.

Sans watches bits of trash drift by and thinks of a certain tall skeleton with a cracked skull. He wonders what he would think if he were here. There was a time when Sans desperately hoped that he might show up, broken machine be damned, that he'd see what was going on and kill the parasite, but then his savior ended up being some random iteration of Alphys instead. What would he say if he saw Sans now? Would he be filled with grief and guilt at not being able to help? Would he try to be sympathetic, but struggle to hide his disgust with Sans once he knew about all the murder and weird clone-incest? Would he frown in confusion and point out some way Sans could have freed himself from the thing's control, and ask why he hadn't thought of it? Sans can't decide which possibility he likes the least. Each one would suck in its own special way.

sorry, he thinks. i tried my best. it wasn't enough, but it was my best. nothing went the way it was supposed to. i did try. He kicks at the water.

He's still sitting at that spot when Frisk shows up an hour later. They're carrying their boots in one hand and the legs of their pants are rolled up past their knees as they wade across the dump. As soon as they spot Sans, they frown and scold him in a tone that reminds him adorably of Toriel.

"sheesh, kid," Sans says. "aren't you happy for me? i'm on tv!" He taps his heel against the broken screen.

The kid rolls their eyes. He wasn't at the dock where they'd planned to meet back up, they remind him. They didn't know where he was, and they were worried. They had to look everywhere until they found him.

For a second, he feels like he's going to do something weird, like cry."sorry, frisk," Sans says, glancing at their empty hand. "flowey said no, huh?"

Frisk nods, downcast.

Sans goes over and slides an arm around Frisk's shoulders, giving them a squeeze. They rest their head against him.

"c'mon. let's go home."

Sans finally got his new room after all.

It smells like fresh paint and it's tidier than his bedroom back home had ever been, through no fault of his own; he came to this world with not even the clothes on his back—that technicolor disaster of an getup wasn't his—and he doesn't own enough stuff to reach critical mess-mass if he tried. Just the keyboard, some sheet music from Undyne, some borrowed clothes, an old phone and charger, a drawing, and that goofy novelty teacup with glittery skulls. And the furniture, if that counts. The other guy says it looks depressing in here (pot, meet kettle) and Papyrus keeps suggesting that they get him a lava lamp or a majestic painting of a skeleton on a flaming motorcycle or something, but Sans likes his room the way it is. He likes it a lot. The walls are white like soap.

Sans shucks off his hoodie and tosses it onto the little heap of socks and undershirts sitting in the general vicinity of the dresser before he crawls into bed. Papyrus insisted on the bed frame and fitted sheets and quilt, and Sans really can't complain, because the end result is a soft and comfortable place to sleep, infinitely better than the couch or a bare mattress or the weird spots where the thing sometimes parked his body if there were no beds around. Huh, maybe this is why most people don't sleep on couches or bare mattresses if they can help it.

The night after the trio moved into their new home, a small white dog crawled out from under the kitchen sink, clambered up the stairs, and wiggled in under Sans' arm while he slept, like a teddy bear. He awakened the next morning feeling warm and rested for the first time in memory. And covered in fur.

He wraps himself into a blanket-burrito, bundled all tight in soft flannel which still smells faintly like dog. His feet are sore from the long walk today. It feels good to lie down. The window is closed and latched, as it always is when he sleeps, but he can still hear the sounds of city life, cars and voices and strains of music from somebody's party down the block. Taped up on the wall adjacent to the window is a drawing of a cool spaceship, with Frisk's name printed neatly in the corner. The ship is rendered with metallic silver marker and there are green aliens looking out the window, waving with their four arms. Kinda reminds him of Muffet.

The kid will keep trying to convince Flowey for as long as it takes. They're more determined than he is, so they're inevitably going to win. Even so, Sans feels sorry for the kid. They kept up a stoic exterior, as they always do, but they were close to tears the whole ride home and he hadn't known what to say to comfort them. It haunts them to know that Flowey's been in the RUINS by himself all this time, tending the flowers for the sake of a long-dead sibling and refusing to budge. They can understand why Flowey is afraid to see Toriel and Asgore, they've complained to Sans, but that doesn't mean he has to stay isolated from everyone for the rest of his life.

Sans closes his eyes and pulls himself into the blanket-burrito like a caterpillar going into its cocoon; the memory of Frisk's sad face still lingers in his mind. He's met more iterations of the kid than he can count, and he doesn't even belong here, but what does it matter? Frisk isn't anyone except Frisk—a kid who apparently lived the kind of life that made climbing Mt. Ebott seem like a good idea. A kid who likes to hold hands and who's trying to grow out their bangs and who still hoards food sometimes, who asks for help with their homework and always falls asleep on the couch when watching cartoons together, their head leaning on his shoulder. They trust him more than they trust "their" Sans, and he's not sure if that means he's taking something away from the other guy or if this is a world where those two would always have had a strained relationship, but he can't bring himself to care.

Sans rolls onto his front, blankets and all, letting his arm dangle over the edge. Finding his keyboard halfway shoved under the bed, he touches his fingertips to the plastic keys, tapping out a scale. It's night now. The world outside his window is illuminated only by the lights of buildings, the sky still holding only the darkest traces of dusky purple.

Downstairs, Papyrus clatters around the kitchen while the other guy makes horrible goose-honking noises on the trombone until Papyrus screeches. dinner soon, Sans thinks sleepily. He should head downstairs. Papyrus has evolved into a solidly mediocre cook when he isn't being distracted, and it makes him happy to see his adoptive brother eat. soon, he thinks, pulling his arm back up and tightening the blankets around himself as he dozes off.

By the time his twin comes in to tell him it's time to eat, he's snoring quietly. One Sans watches the other Sans sleep, considers poking him awake, and then shrugs, deciding that the not-so-new guy needs sleep more than he needs food. He walks out, and then back in, and crouches next to the bed to turn on the keyboard and mess with the settings so it'll meow instead of making piano noises the next time New Guy tries to play. Then he goes back downstairs.

In Sans' dream, a slimy crawling thing is pulling itself up inside the ladder of his ribcage while someone stands behind him, cooing into what would be his ear if he had ears, hugging him so his arms are pinned down to his sides. The thing climbs higher. A bony chin presses into his shoulder and a hand stained with colorful ink touches his cheekbone as tentacles coil up where his heart would be if he had one, as soft warm breath tickles the side of his face...

He lurches awake, cold and sweaty. He presses his head under the pillow and lies shivering until birds begin to sing outside his window.

After he's showered and dressed, he stares into the mirror. The SOUL in his eye socket doesn't look so bad anymore. From a distance. If you don't look at it for too long, or look too closely at the scars and fissures under the semi-translucent surface.

The other eye socket is still dark. The thing shattered his right orbital bones on its way in... he thinks. He has no memory of the injury (and this is one of those situations where he's happy to not remember) but there's no bone in the back of the socket when there should be; he could poke his fingers straight through to tickle the inside of his skull if he wanted. Alphys thinks the lack of an eye light has more to do with the condition of his SOUL, since the physical damage was fully healed long before Sans came to this world, so he works at strengthening his magic, then maybe the eye light will come back. She thinks.

meh.

"wow, up before the crack of noon? must be a special occasion," the other guy says as he passes by the kitchen table. There's an open laptop on the table and some scattered papers around it. The astronomy program at the local college is supposedly pretty good, and in a fit of ambition the other guy signed up for a couple classes just for the hell of it. Sans will be surprised if it takes more than a month for him to lose interest and flunk out, but until then, he seems to be having fun.

"yep, i'm meeting up with my catnip dealer," Sans answers, zipping up his hoodie while the other guy chuckles.

Sans—the original, the one who'd lived in this world longer—lets out a last heh as the front door closes, then goes quiet.

It's good that the new guy is doing better. He still sleeps too much (kettle, meet pot—isn't that how that idiom goes?) and Sans is getting the feeling that teaming up to prank Frisk in the Underground was more of a don't fight in front of the kids situation than a sign of things to come, but in the beginning it had seemed like the guy Falling Down was a matter of when, not if. He'd seemed so fragile and defeated. Now he's not. That's good. Sans has no interest in being anybody's mom.

Still...

Still.

He sends New Guy text messages sometimes, usually memes. They almost never get a response, but Sans doesn't take it too personally. He knows what it's like to find yourself stranded away from home. New Guy will come around.

It's a bit of a hike to get back to the Underground, and that's before you account for the literal hiking, but if Flowey leaves before Sans can arrive then hey, mission accomplished.

The little weed is still right where Frisk left him, though, and glaring with all the venom a tiny flower can muster. Sans is well aware of what his floral friend is capable of, but all he can think is aww.

"Are you KIDDING me? Ugh." Flowey grouses. "Go home. You're wasting your time."

"loafing around and wasting time on the surface, loafing around and wasting time down here... same difference." Sans shrugs.

"Frisk sent you, didn't they?"

"nah, i came here on my own. am i unwelcome? just say the word, and i'll dip."

"I don't care what you do." Flowey lies, looking away.

In response, Sans gives a yawn that isn't completely fake and leans back into the cavern wall. The flowerbed would be comfier, but sitting on a dead kid's grave in the middle of a chat with their brother seems like maybe not a smart move. Despite that impressive show of tact, Flowey glares at him with open suspicion.

"What do you really want?" Flowey asks. "And don't say 'a haircut', I've heard that joke from you before. From you AND normal Sans."

"huh. i only met you that one time, back in waterfall, and i don't seem to remember using it then... how many times did we go through that conversation?"

"Once," Flowey says. He doesn't like the way Sans is looking at him. Like he knows. "There have been other times, though. Doesn't that scare you? Maybe you should leave, just to be safe. I can be pretty dangerous."

"meh. i like to believe in second chances. i think you're different now."

"Not really."

"only one way to find out, right?" Sans tips his head up, indicating the slice of blue sky visible through the cavern roof.

Flowey sighs heavily, making sure Sans knows that his question was stupid and predictable. "No. I've told Frisk I won't and the answer is still NO. I'm not leaving. You can't MAKE me leave."

"i can't force you, and i'm not interested in trying. but still... frisk worries about you, down here all alone."

The last time Flowey left the Underground and encountered humans who weren't Chara, he was murdered, but if he points that out then it'll sound like he's scared. "I don't care," Flowey says. And what he thinks is, I'm NOT alone.

Sans looks at him with that creepy blacked-out eye socket and broken SOUL. Flowey knows for a fact that this Sans-clone is weak and pathetic—past experimentation shows that he just freezes up and whimpers like a baby in the face of danger—but he's creepy to look at. And the creepy feeling only deepens when he seems to read Flowey's thoughts.

"this flowerbed... it's where chara is buried, right?" Sans asks quietly, with as much carefulness as if he were stepping out onto thin ice.

"What does that have to do with anything."

Maybe a lot. Or nothing. Sans has seen different versions of Chara, he remembers that much, and not all of them necessarily made a great impression, but certain things seem to hold true no matter what, in much the same way that Undyne and Alphys always seem to end up together and Burgerpants always seems to end up working some crappy dead-end job.

He pushes his luck a little further.

"i think... it would make them happy for you to leave the underground. to try and make a new life for yourself, even if they aren't there and it's not exactly the life you thought you would have. they wouldn't want you to just... languish in the dark. that's why they made that plan, isn't it? so you could be free. why throw that away?"

"How are YOU so sure of what they would or wouldn't want?" Flowey says. "You weren't there. You don't know them. You don't know what we... you don't know ANYTHING at ALL."

"they were your sibling. they loved you. no one who loves you would want you to stay down here."

The little flower makes a face, like a kid trying to look tough so they won't cry instead. "Go away," he snarls. "Before I get rid of you. Go away. Go AWAY."

Welp. Sans did say he'd leave if Flowey told him to. He pushes himself to his feet. "ok."

"Go away and don't come back here, not ever."

"ok."

"NOW."

"ok."

Sans edges back, and for a moment he isn't sure what Flowey is going to do, with hate burning through those beady eyes. But Sans backs away, slowly, and for the second time that Sans remembers, Flowey lets him go.

A breeze rattles through the flowerbed, soft as a sigh.

"Shut up," Flowey mumbles. "Shut up."

Papyrus has gotten into designing what the humans call "escape rooms", totally delighted to learn that they do in fact have an appreciation for puzzle-solving. Papyrus makes the things and Undyne tests them out, and then Papyrus dials things back a few orders of magnitude from whatever versions of the room she liked, because apparently humans have building codes that frown upon fire and spike pits, and would probably also ban conveyor belts that make the rider puke if anyone had expected it to be necessary.

Now that they're on the surface world and the other Sans seems confident that the "new guy" isn't going to drop dead in the immediate future, the two of them don't spend much time together; the other guy is happily doing his own thing, and he's so much of a living reminder of things Sans would rather forget that it's better to just not be alone in the same room for too long. If the other guy notices any tension between them then he's nice enough to pretend otherwise.

So when Sans isn't in the mood for napping amidst fire and flying debris, he goes walking around Ebott, sometimes putting up dog posters ("here's a pic, he's not lost or anything i just wanted you to look at him") and other times just watching people. It would be easy for a human to get lost in the crowd, but monsters are still such a novelty that people seem pretty interested in watching him. He ends up having some interesting conversations that way. He tells stupid jokes, and when the inevitable holy shit, a talking skeleton phase wears off, the humans tell him about themselves, their lives. A tween girl with brown pigtails and huge soda-bottle glasses spends like fifteen minutes showing him pictures on her phone of her pet corn snakes, and a scruffy guy who looks like somebody's dad hears that he has some interest in music and goes on a tangent about how he got into playing the hurdy-gurdy, which instantly becomes Sans' favorite instrument based on name alone. They ask questions about him, which he easily deflects; people like to talk about themselves. He tries his best to be polite to younger adult humans, and he stays well away from the college campus.

When he doesn't feel like being stared at, he keeps his hood up and wears jeans to cover his bony legs, and he wanders.

That bunny girl from Grillby's did all right for herself. He sometimes spots her hanging around certain restaurants, always with a different goth-looking dude on her arm. He's not sure if it's a polycule situation or they're all different people each time, he can't remember any of their faces, but it seems like she's having fun, so hey, cool. A lot of rabbit and cat monsters seem pretty popular among segments of the human population for some reason.

He walks into a cramped little music store on a faintly dubious-looking street, a place with white cinderblock walls hidden behind teetering mountains of old records and a badly tuned piano ensconced in a corner. He plays meme songs until the dude behind the counter yells at him, which is what Sans expected, and then the guy almost has a heart attack when what he'd thought was a skinny preteen in a hoodie turns around to reveal a skull for a face, which Sans should've expected. He laughs it off, but he also buys a CD with a set of bagpipes printed prominently on the cover, just to make it up to the guy. It seems like the kind of music that would evoke some strong feelings from Papyrus. Especially if it's nice and early in the morning.

Later, he finds a quiet spot in the city library and chills out behind a stack of old reference books, leafing sleepily through a human science magazine. He snaps to attention at the sound of a noise, which turns out to be a tiny human in striped ducky-print overalls climbing up on the table. They say... something. And then something else. Thanks to the baby-lisp and his own drowsiness, he doesn't even realize they're not speaking English until they switch over.

"Puppy!" they announce.

"seriously? wow. praise dog."

Tiny Human literally stares into his SOUL, then switches back to... something, he doesn't know and doesn't worry about it. He lets them grab and poke at his fingers and occasionally supplies their names—phalanges, metacarpals, scaphoid...—until their moms emerge from the children's section to retrieve them. Not the worst conversation he's had with a kid in a library, honestly.

If he walks for long enough in any one direction, he reaches the edge of the city. There's a highway to the south which winds up and down around the hills like a cartoon caterpillar, leading far away. He's not sure where the road would lead if he followed it. He looks at it, sometimes, at the bus station nearby and the passing cars.

He's always preferred staying close to home, but Ebott doesn't feel much like home. He could just leave. Hop on a bus or hitchhike. As much as the thing enjoyed the company of certain humans, it was too busy hopping between dimensions to take an interest in the surface world, and his older memories are hazy now. There's nothing stopping him. Maybe he'll find what he's looking for, somewhere out there.

He thinks these thoughts, and then he thinks about the annoying CD sitting in his inventory, which he knows Papyrus will hate, and he remembers the expression on Frisk's face when they had to leave the Underground without Flowey. And Undyne with her hair all messy from sleep when he showed up at her house in the middle of the night. And the other guy, his "twin". He thinks of him, too.

He turns around and walks home.

Sans had almost forgotten that last hike up the mountain, figuring that his efforts were all for nothing, but then he arrives to pick Frisk up from school and they practically knock him off his feet. He flinches a little as they grab and hug him tight, but for once they don't notice—breathlessly, they tell him that they saw Flowey today, that they were at recess and he appeared near a clump of grass and other flowers, hidden where nobody else could see. Flowey said he wouldn't go home with them, but he would probably hang around the surface world for a while, which is tsundere-speak for okay, you win, I won't hide in the RUINS anymore.

Sans ruffles their hair. He won't be able to do that for too much longer; the kid is a little taller than him now, so it already looks a little weird. "heh heh. i knew he'd come around. all you had to do was wait for your words to take root—"

Frisk rolls their eyes and gives him a playful shove, and Sans stumbles and laughs. Kids and parents stream past, humans and monsters alike. A kid with yellow scales and no arms hops around until Frisk sees them and waves to them from across the street. They'll see each other tomorrow.

In a place that is far away, but not so different from the world where Sans will spend the rest of his life, two monsters are sitting in the wishing room, gazing up at gemstones in the ceiling which look only a little like the stars they'll see in the sky when the barrier breaks and monsterkind goes free.

Alphys runs her claw down the stem of an echo flower, her arm around her knees and her tail coiled around herself.

"What's up?" Undyne asks. "You seem... distracted."

"S-sorry."

Undyne would tell her not to apologize, but then Alphys would get embarrassed and apologize for apologizing... "Did something happen? Is there anybody I need to beat up for you?"

Alphys grins nervously. "Um, that part is... taken care of? Heh heh." The smile dies away. Her giggle doesn't. She scoots away from the laughing echo flower. "I'm worried about Sans. Ahhh, not the one we... not him, the other one. Um. You know what I mean."

Undyne makes a face, scratching her neck behind her gills. "After this long? I don't think he's coming back, Alphy."

"Exactly. And I don't know if what I did was enough... or too much. I mean I THINK it was right, but without being able to see the end result..."

"C'mon, you're GREAT at, like, sciencey doctor stuff. Of course it worked!"

Alphys grimaces at the total assurance in Undyne's voice. "But wh-what if it didn't? What if he's dead? And if he's alive, where is he? Or... wh-what if that creature inside him didn't even die?"

Then I'LL do the stabbing, if it ever comes back here, Undyne thinks. It was my job in the first place, you shouldn't have had to do it. She tosses her hair out of her face. Admitting that she's worried too won't be any help to her friend, so what she says out loud is: "You handled it great. Whatever happened afterwards... it's better than what would've happened if you hadn't acted at all. If it still didn't turn out the best way, then that isn't your fault."

"I know," Alphys says in a small voice.

"I think he's okay, though."

"How do you know?"

"I don't," Undyne admits. "It's just a hunch, I guess. But I think he'll be okay."

It's not as strong of a reassurance as Alphys wants, but she knows it's the most honest answer Undyne can give her. That's one of the things she likes most about her best friend.

be okay, be okay, be okay, be okay... the echo flower whispers.

"I guess so," says Alphys. "...Y-yeah, I think you're right."

"Hell YEAH I am!"

Undyne grins, and Alphys manages a nervous smile.

They look up at the glittering gemstones, the way they'll someday look up and see real stars in all their beauty.