.
Not with a Bang but with
I feel obliged here to draw attention again to talkingsoup's The Scientist series – parts of this chapter draw inspiration from her writing, especially in terms of some of the imagery.
This chapter is very long, I should point out –12k words! – so if you'd rather read it in two sittings, honestly, do so. I promise this will be the last chapter as ridiculously long as this.
You know the drill – warnings for slightly-more-graphic child abuse/experimentation.
CHAPTER FOUR:
Let us Erase this Pointless World
oOo
"Determination Trials log, September 199X. Injection of Determination extract, Batch One Hundred and Eighty-seven, is now complete."
Gaster was holding his Dictaphone up to his mouth again. He'd begun to favour it over handwritten notes lately, though Sans wasn't sure why.
Sans was strapped down to the examination table, struggling weakly against the restraints, a series of small whimpers slipping past his teeth. He felt as if he was on fire, and his left eye was flaring wildly.
"Subject passed out briefly, for about ninety seconds, and continues to exhibit predictable signs of weakness. Subject is now in recovery and has reported sharp and acute pain, concentrated in the left humerus––where the injection was administered––, in the sternum and in the lumbar region, as well as pain in the cranial area, manifesting in the form of a dull ache. Subject's left and only functioning eye appears to be… "
Sans let out a thin wail despite himself, and after glancing at him once, Gaster summoned his magic hands, which loosened and finally unfastened the restraints, allowing Sans to curl up into foetal position.
" … next injection is scheduled to occur early next week. If all goes well, it should be possible to increase the dosage the administration after that… "
Sans closed his eyes, trying to even out his breathing.
" … low fever … "
's just another old test, Sans. Suck it up.
" … significant spike in readings from … "
Sans felt a hand on his skull, another on his back, steadying him. He realised he'd been shaking and he opened his eyes, unfurling from his foetal position. His breathing finally evened out and he managed to push the pain to the back of his mind. After a minute he forced himself to sit up, shifting into a more comfortable kneeling position on the operating table.
"Ah, Sans. You feel better?"
Sans managed to nod, looking down at the floor. It seemed a very long way down. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to cry.
Then a hand was cupping itself under his chin, not a magical hand but Gaster's real hand, attached to his arm and his body, to his shoulder and then to his head, and Sans looked up, blinking back the tears that had started to form in his eyes anyway.
"Deep breaths, now. Calm yourself. That's quite enough, I think."
Sans raised a hand to scrub furiously at his eye sockets with the back of his wrist.
There was a heavy pause. "Can you stand?"
"Nuh-uh," Sans muttered, sullen––what did Gaster think? He wasn't about to try standing; his legs would just collapse under him, they had done before, and then he'd just be lying there, crumpled up in a pitiful, snivelling heap at Gaster's feet. His body was pain; pure, sharp pain, his head was swimming. And he was tired.
He was really tired.
Suddenly a glass of apple juice was thrust into his hands, and Sans blinked, dizzily realising Gaster had released his chin. He wondered where the apple juice had come from. Still dazed, and his entire small body trembling so much he could barely keep a firm grip on the glass, Sans looked up at his creator in confusion.
Gaster coughed, a little awkwardly. "Drink," he said. "It would do you good to get some sugar in you."
Sans stared down at the liquid, then downed the juice in one go. It did nothing to ease the pain, but it did a world of good for his parched throat, and for the headache. He quickly set the glass down next to him before he dropped it. "Thanks," he managed.
Gaster just nodded once. "You should lie down. If you do not sleep, you may fall more seriously ill." He held out a hand. "Come. Rest."
Sans stared at the hand a moment, and at the hole in the centre of its palm. He could see a bit of the tiled floor through the hole, if he tilted his head the right way. After a long pause, he reached out, and took it.
And then a set of magic hands was easing him down, one on his back to steady him, another on his shoulder, helping him down from the operating table and onto the floor, the hands' touch soft. Gentle wasn't quite the right word. Sans tensed. He didn't like it when Gaster touched him like that. It felt too close to caring, and he wished he wouldn't.
Ding. His prayers answered, he felt blue magic secure itself around his soul, and now Gaster was picking him up, easing him gently along behind him and suspended in the air, as if Sans were a kite on the end of a string.
Through the lab complex, past the Determination Extractor with its great and frightening set of jaws, and into the infirmary. Sans was lowered down onto a bed, and at last the grip on his soul was released, leaving him to slide under the blankets and resume foetal position.
Gaster was saying something, and it took Sans a few moments to crawl out from under the covers and look at him again. His vision was swimming now. "Wha'?"
Gaster tilted his head. He had somehow procured a clipboard, and he was smiling too widely for comfort. "You will be a success, Sans. The vessel that frees monsterkind. You, and every monster, will see those stars you like to read about so very much in your astronomy books. You will… "
The words washed over Sans as sleep took him.
oOo
Over the next two months, the Determination trials continued with a renewed fervour. Sans was barely given a few days to recover from the last injection before Gaster hauled him down to the labs again. He seemed to have lost enthusiasm for Sans' intelligence tests, interested only in pursuing the Determination trials he'd begun three years ago. In the days Gaster didn't come for him, Sans saw neither hide nor hair of him, though he sometimes heard the scientist pacing about the house muttering to himself in the wee hours.
But then, two or three days later, Gaster was back, needle and scalpel at the ready. He always came back.
"Injection of Determination extract Batch One Hundred and Eighty-eight was a success… "
"Injection of Determination extract Batch One Hundred and Eighty-nine was a success… "
"Injection of Determination extract Batch One Hundred and Ninety was a great success indeed… "
The last time Gaster came for him, Sans was coming up eleven years old.
oOo
Papyrus was having his nap upstairs the day it happened. Sans was watching cartoons, curled up on the sofa. It was a very silly cartoon about a cat––an ordinary cat––who chased a mouse monster all across the Underground. In the cartoon, the cat kept running into various unlikely obstacles, and often experienced such delightful setbacks as falling into Hotland's lava, falling off cliff faces, stumbling into the spiders' territory, and encountering humans who apparently preferred dogs. At the end of each fifteen-minute episode, when it seemed as if the cat were just about to catch their prey, they ended up in a situation that should by all means have killed both of them, and the mouse monster just narrowly got away.
When Papyrus watched the cartoon, he always wondered why the cat didn't choose a different monster to chase, or, better, just leave the mouse alone.
Sans wondered why the mouse didn't just let the cat eat it already; all that running seemed very tiring.
The front door opened to reveal Gaster. He was wearing ordinary clothes for a change––a long black trench coat over a white turtleneck sweater and black work pants.
"Come with me," said Gaster, and Sans mouthed the words along with him.
Sans shifted on the sofa. "Just lemme finish this episode?" he wheedled. On the screen, the CORE exploded, creating a mushroom cloud. The cat somersaulted out of the rubble and set off after the startled mouse, tail on fire. This was why the cartoon was very silly––everyone knew that if the CORE exploded they'd all die. Actually, if anything large enough exploded in the Underground they'd all die, because the ceiling would cave.
"Now." Sans reached for the remote, and froze. He turned his head to get a better view of Gaster.
Gaster's posture was erect, his chin held high. His hands were folded in front of him. His head was tilted at a strange angle, and his face was alight with a strange fire.
Most notably, Sans had to put in extra effort to understand his speech.
"You will come with me." Sans fumbled to turn the television off, sliding off the sofa, staring up at him with wide eyes. Gaster extended a hand. "The time has come."
Sans cocked his head, gaze sliding down to the offered hand. Then back up to Gaster's smiling face. "Time for what?"
Ding. His soul was turned blue, and he yelped as he was suddenly tugged forward across the room and deposited none too gently onto the ground. "Time," he said, a gleam passing across his eyelights, "for our work to become a success."
"Succ––"
Gaster turned on his heel. Sans was forced again to stumble along behind him. "But what about Papyrus?" he called out after him. "He's gonna wake up from his nap soon, can't I at least wait 'til he's up to tell him – "
Gaster kept walking.
Sans tried a new tactic. "You left the door to the house open, genius."
A magic hand appeared and swatted him over the head for that, but it wasn't very hard.
Gaster kept walking.
Two blocks north. Then a right. Then a sharp –
Gaster kept walking.
"Wrong way, stupid."
Gaster didn't even hit him this time, and Sans managed to catch up a little. "Gaster, you missed the turn to the labs – "
He stopped in his tracks, making Sans stop too. "We are not going to the labs, Sans."
"We're… not?"
"We are going," said Gaster, "to the CORE."
Sans' eyes widened. "What?"
Gaster paused. Then, as if leading him by the soul was somehow insufficient, he took Sans by the elbow and began to tug him along behind him, muttering something about wanting him to keep up. Sans struggled violently until it started to hurt, and he felt his HP drop just a bit. Finally, he stilled, allowing Gaster to haul him along.
A new path now. Sans looked wildly around, daring to let his feet drag just a little. "Why the CORE? What's at the CORE?"
Gaster paused, and his steps slowed, making it easier for Sans to keep up. He cast the child a sidelong glance. "You never did. Learn what I was pursuing as part of my independent studies. Did you?" His voice was oddly broken, pauses randomly placed.
"Uh… no. I thought you were just doing pet projects maybe. Like for fun. That's what I'd do if I were a scientist." Sans thought. "Am I… getting a new sibling?"
"I only have two hands," was the response. Already Sans was lagging behind again, and Gaster gave him a yank. "No. My 'pet projects' have always been linked. To you."
"To me? But you didn't hurt me."
Gaster laughed for some reason. "No, Sans. I did not hurt you." Pause number…. Nevermind, Sans was quickly losing track. "We are all trapped by means of the Barrier. Do you remember when I showed you and your brother the readings from the Void?"
"… yeah?"
"Do you recall the machine you saw?"
"The box thing? It looked like it was made of scrap metal. I thought it was a hunk o' junk."
"Well. The machine is made of scrap metal, yes. However. It is far from a 'hunk o' junk,' as you so eloquently put it." They were crossing another square, this one mostly deserted save for a young couple enjoying some ice creams outside an ice cream parlour that overlooked the square. They stared as the two skeletons passed through. "The machine is one of my own creation, something I invented long before you came from the tube. Its purpose is to detect the entrance of an anomaly in the Underground."
"Oh. So, like, when the humans come, it tells you? Don't you got the cameras to tell you that?"
"No. It detects an anomaly – a being with incredible amounts of Determination. Not all humans are anomalies. An anomaly has not set foot in the Underground for a very long time."
Sans wrinkled his brow in confusion. "Huh?"
"It has been nearly a hundred years since an anomaly has entered the Underground. Not that I would not expect you to know that part of our history. It has been all but erased, brushed under the rug by His Majesty. All very hush-hush. Few monsters are alive today that remember it.
"We all have our own paths to follow in the Underground. We experience time in a linear fashion. And the Underground, as I have explained to you, is a closed system. Think of it as a very complex equation, with each monster here as one of its variables."
"Whoa. Big equation."
"Indeed. Now what happens if you add a variable to an equation? Or remove one?"
"Um. Doesn't that happen all the time? Like, when babies are born or when people die? It just, like, changes, right?"
"It is not that simple. No. Perhaps it was a weak analogy, forgive me––but suppose something from outside the equation were to enter the Underground. When a human falls in, that is. The Barrier delivers a great shudder. By all means, a human has no business tumbling into our Kingdom. The equation must be rearranged, the variables redistributed. Things shift."
Gaster began to walk faster. Sans felt like his arm was about to pop free from its socket, and held back a whimper.
"Suppose time were damaged. Suppose it were damaged beyond repair, great feats undone and unaccomplished. Events that never took place. One would think all of time would collapse, no? And yet the universe carries on, perseveres. Hastens to stitch up the opened wounds, repair itself to the best of its ability. But still, a tear is a tear."
"I said the machine. Detects an anomaly. But I abandoned work on the project years ago. It had very little merit that anyone else could understand, and it was draining resources to boot. His Majesty was trying to persuade me to leave it behind, try something new. And so it sits in the lab. Collecting dust. A half-finished side project. Where it has been sitting for the past four and a half years."
Sans felt he should say something. "I'm sorry."
"It is no matter. It has its uses, and besides. I no longer have a need for it. The future holds much greater things in store. For you and I."
Gaster pulled him round another corner, and Sans winced as his elbow was uncomfortably jolted. This was a dead-end street, and at its end was an entrance to the CORE. The CORE's main, more impressive entrance was in Hotland––that was the entrance they took you through on the third grade school trip––but there were several other, unpretentious workers' elevators all across New Home and Hotland, for the Underground's great powerhouse extended all the way to the Capital. Without letting go of Sans' elbow, he reached into his breast pocket and produced a key card, which he swiped over a reader panel next to the elevator. The doors slid open, and Gaster pushed Sans inside, finally releasing him and leaving him to huddle in the corner and rub his now-aching elbow.
Gaster followed him into the elevator and the doors slid shut. He scanned his key card again, pressed a button, and the elevator gave a great shudder before beginning to lurch its way down the elevator shaft with an overworked groan.
Sans waited for Gaster to say more, but instead he was met with silence. He hesitated, listening to the elevator's descent. It was moving remarkably slowly. Then he heard himself ask, "Why are you telling me all this?"
Gaster glanced at him. "Do not worry, Sans. You shall see soon enough."
Sans paused. He had other questions, of course. One had been nagging at him in particular. "Why can't I understand you?"
Gaster looked over at him. "You cannot understand me?"
"I… I… I can. But it's hard. Takes effort." Normally it took Sans no effort at all. Skeletons had ways of understanding each other's fonts, even strange ones that came in different alphabets, like Wingdings. For other monsters, understanding foreign fonts took some getting used to.
Gaster's gaze returned to the elevator doors. It struck Sans that it was a very long ride down. They must be going to the very bottom of the CORE. "Interesting," was all he said, and Sans knew better than to dwell on the subject.
The moment the elevator landed and its doors slid open, he was struck by a great, profound sense of wrongness, deeper than anything he'd ever felt before. It rolled into the elevator and surrounded him, gripped at his soul, clung to the air like a bad smell.
Feeling Gaster's eyes on him, Sans forced himself to ignore the sensation and focus on the view of the CORE just beyond. Sans had only ever been to the CORE once, on the third grade school trip. Based on his memories, this part of the Underground's great powerhouse was all but unrecognisable – it was empty, here, and the lighting was dimmer, and the floor was uncarpeted. There were no puzzles in sight. Sans stepped out behind Gaster onto cool metal floor.
His creator waved a hand, and Sans winced as he felt a great heaviness grip at his soul again, so tight it was hard to breathe.
The pair made their way down a very long corridor. It seemed to have a dead end, but Gaster simply swiped his key card, and a hidden entrance slid open in the wall. Like a secret passageway in a story, thought Sans.
The secret passageway opened into yet another foreign part of the CORE: not deserted, but not very active either. At least the lighting was better. A pair of monsters – a short, fleshy red monster and an enormous slime-like creature with a head that comprised most of her body – were replacing the fuse in a fuse box on the wall. The slime monster was holding a toolbox between her jaws. They nodded to Gaster – or rather, the short one nodded and the second one bent her entire self forward, causing the toolbox to clank against the floor – respectfully as he passed.
"Ah – sir – I mean, Doctor?" the fleshy monster called out. He shuffled forward from one foot to the other in a kind of teetering motion. "I'd normally encourage showing my children around my workplace, but given the recent readings – "
Gaster stopped, glancing over his shoulder. "Yes?"
"Well, you know, Doctor." The monster laughed a little uneasily. "That radiation's dangerous for a little one."
"Do not worry yourself. We will not be very long."
The monster hesitated. "If you say so, Doctor." He returned to helping the slime monster with the fuse box, casting a concerned glance at Sans.
Gaster nodded once, and with Sans in tow, rounded a corner.
The feeling of wrongness grew stronger the further they walked. Sans closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment to reflect on it – with Gaster pulling him along behind him, he didn't really have to worry so much about walking.
It was not, he realised, the vibes of wrongness he'd gotten from Gaster, that day he'd hauled him and his brother down to the labs to show them readings from the Void. This wrongness cut deeper, crawled up his spine. It reached out and filled the air, pulling everything it touched towards it like a black hole. (Sans had read about black holes in his astronomy books, and he thought they were the coolest thing in the universe. He'd rather face a black hole than whatever waited for him at their destination).
And all he wanted was to go home.
Sans did the predictable: he began to struggle again, and, silently, he began to cry, letting his feet drag, pulling back against the dark blue grip on his soul. The effort alone burned, his soul felt as if it were on fire, but he managed to stay rooted to the spot.
Gaster suddenly stopped in his tracks, turning to look back at Sans with a frown on his face. "Stop that."
Sans shook his head stubbornly.
The grip on his soul was pointedly maintained, but Gaster turned on his heel and strode back over to Sans. He stared down at him. "What. Is the matter? Are you… unsettled?"
"I wanna go home," he mumbled, avoiding his gaze. "I miss Papyrus. I… h-he's… he's prob'ly woken up from his nap now. He, he must be scared, he's prob'ly wondering where I am, he's prob'ly crying… "
Gaster looked at him a moment. Then he turned again, and began to stride forward. In one dispassionate move, he raised one hand above his head and curled it into a fist, as though crushing a piece of paper into a ball.
The strain on his soul grew unbearable. Sans let out a choking gasp and found himself flying forward in the air. Then, at Gaster's heels, he was dropped unceremoniously to the ground. He scrabbled to his feet, and allowed his creator to drag him forth a few steps.
"Where are we goin', anyway? We've been walking for a real long time."
"We are going. To the very heart of the CORE."
Sans stumbled, and he struggled, if only a little bit now, a whimper escaping his teeth. "C'mon, Gaster. C'mon, I'm scared –"
But Gaster ignored him.
They passed another pair of CORE workers, a tall, ginger-furred cat monster, and a smaller, armless dinosaur monster. Desperate now, Sans cast a pleading glance their way as Gaster dragged him past. They glanced at him, and at each other, and finally at Gaster, striding efficiently forward with the younger skeleton in tow, but they didn't say a word.
Then Gaster pulled him around a corner and out of sight.
There were no turn-offs in this corridor, no rooms branching off it. Only a heavy metal door at the end. Here, Sans noticed for the first time that the air seemed thicker, denser, more compact. Like a well-packed ball of clay.
His head was starting to hurt.
They reached the end of the corridor. Gaster pressed his hand to a reader panel on the door. There was a beep, and a click.
The door slid open, overhead lights flickering to life on the other side.
Sans' stomach, such as it were, gave a violent lurch.
The room on the other side of the door was circular, and it was vast – it must have been half a mile wide in diameter. A domed ceiling loomed high above. A narrow, railed catwalk hugged the circumference of the room.
By all means a room of this size should not have been able to fit inside the CORE.
Below, perhaps a few storeys below, there should have been floor, or, if not that, than the magma that churned at the very bottom of the mountain.
Instead, there was nothing.
Nothing but darkness.
When Sans was three, Gaster had locked him in the closet for the first time. It had been over a temper tantrum – he'd been tired, or hungry, something like that. He'd locked him in there for two hours. Since then, Gaster had locked him in the closet as punishment more times than he could count. The longest he'd ever gotten had been half a day.
It never stopped being terrifying.
It was cramped in the closet, and it was dusty, but most of all it was dark. Sans was too ashamed to admit the darkness still frightened him––it was deep, and endless, and all-encompassing, the kind of dark that seemed to devour everything around it. Dark enough he couldn't even see his hand in front of his face. Not even the slightest sliver of light bled in past the door. Just a deep, infinite black.
This darkness was more profound.
"G-Gaster?" he asked, and his voice was small and high and frightened. "Where are we? Is this really the… the… "
Gaster smiled wide, the Cheshire cat who'd gotten the mouse.
"Welcome, Sans. To the Void."
"The… "
"In the heart of the CORE, the very soul of the Underground, I have isolated a tear in our world. A tear in the very fabric of spacetime. And on the other side of that tear is the Void: the nothing on the edges of the universe. The project that has consumed so very much of my time for the past seven months or so."
He stepped out onto the catwalk, and Sans, trembling so hard his bones rattled audibly, was forced to follow him. Gaster waved a hand and released his grip on Sans' soul, but the stress there did not ease. It was held instead by the feeling given off by the Void, for here was the great wrongness that had been unsettling him since his arrival in the CORE. It was the feeling of the absolute nothing that was bleeding into the world.
Gaster began to make his way along the catwalk, Sans at his heels.
Sans fiddled with the hem of his T-shirt. "… but… why are we… I-I mean… " He lifted a hand to scrub furiously at his tears. "You said your, your pet projects were… were linked to me."
"I did not create this hole in the world. It was created, as I have mentioned, by the first anomaly to set foot in the Underground. According to my research, that anomaly initiated countless Saves… even its fair share of Resets. Manipulation of the timeline. Events that. Never occurred. And yet they did. If they had not occurred, they would never have been undone in the first place. That damage is certainly not lessened by the fact that an anomaly even has the ability to carry memories past Saves and Resets.
"And our little bubble universe is forced to rearrange itself. The timeline is forced to rearrange itself, for how is it to compensate for this new course of events? But even if the timeline is rewritten, damage occurs – every Save, and especially every Reset, causes a tear in the world. And this is what we call a paradox.
"A refresher – what is an anomaly?"
Sans answered automatically. "A being with incredible, concentrated amounts of – "
Oh.
Gaster paused. Then he turned a full 180 degrees to face Sans. He knelt to his level, placed his hands on the child's shoulders. Sans squirmed, but did not struggle. "You, Sans. Are the vessel that will free monsterkind. The anomaly of my own creation."
Sans could only bring himself to stare back at him with wide, frightened eyes.
"You will initiate a True Reset."
His mouth opened and closed in shock. "I… I'll… what?"
Gaster held out a hand. "Come. Take my hand."
Sans looked at the extended hand hesitantly. Then he took it, looping his fingers through the gaping hole in his palm. Gaster stood up, and Sans allowed himself to be lead along the catwalk.
"I thought at first. That I could create a vessel that would be able to trick the Barrier into letting it pass unharmed. A weapon, that would harvest the remaining souls and lead us into war against the humans. But I was wrong. You resemble a true monster too closely.
"I then thought that, using the power of Determination, I could use the vessel I had to shatter the Barrier, with no need for the remaining souls. But it later became evident that this would never work. The Barrier's magic is too strong. And besides. Humans, too. Are strong. Not even my vessel would stand a chance against a human army. And so another option occurred to me.
"If an anomaly is a being with high amounts of Determination. Then why not. Create one?"
Sans paused. "I'm… an anomaly."
"Your body is filled with Determination. It is. Remarkable, really. What we have done together. According to my research. Yes. You have enough Determination. To be considered an anomaly."
They had been walking along the catwalk for a couple of minutes now, and Sans was careful to keep his eyes on Gaster and not on the Void that simmered away beneath.
His headache was getting worse.
"I don't understand," said Sans, very quietly.
Gaster didn't answer him, just kept leading him along the catwalk. "Close your eyes," he said abruptly.
"Close my – why?"
"Go on."
Sans closed them. He felt Gaster tug him forward a little more, his strides slower now, giving Sans the opportunity to comfortably keep up. A few more steps, and he felt Gaster pull him in front of him, nudge him forward. "And open."
Sans opened his eyes, and took an enormous step back. He was standing on the very edge of the catwalk, facing the Void. Part of the encircling railing had been removed, and he'd been positioned right in the gap. He shook his head violently.
"What's the matter, Sans? Surely you are too old. To be afraid of the dark?" He laughed then, like it was funny.
Sans spun to face him. "I wanna know what's going on."
Gaster knelt to his level again, cupping his chin between thumb and forefinger. "Today is the day. That you will free monsterkind. Now, you will initiate a True Reset. You will draw your energy from the Void, and you will rewind time. You will go back over a thousand years, and undo the war."
"But I… "
"Upon the Reset, a great explosion of time energy will occur. The nothing, the emptiness of the Void will devour the Underground, and erase it from time. The Barrier will never have been erected. You and I. Are at the eye of the storm. We will open our eyes. And we will find that we stand in an empty, unremarkable cavern that is fully open to the world outside, this very cavern a thousand years ago. We will be the only creatures with any memory of what we have accomplished, and we will celebrate our success."
"But if we Reset to… I was only born eleven years ago."
"Yes. But you are standing here, at the heart of the explosion. You are an anomaly. By all definitions you exist outside of spacetime, outside of our closed system. You will remain as you are now."
"But – "
"You will initiate a Reset."
Sans shook his head. "But what about Papyrus?"
Gaster's expression turned sour. "What about your brother?"
Sans frowned. "He was born less'n a thousand years ago, too, and he's not an anomaly. He won't… "
"When we Reset the timeline. Your brother will not be there. No."
Sans batted Gaster's hand away and raised his chin. "Then no. I won't do it."
Gaster cocked a brow. "No?"
Sans shook his head and sucked in a deep breath. "No. I'm not gonna Reset. Not if I can't have Papyrus. I want my baby brother. If we can go back and get him, then okay, fine. If he's here at the eye of the storm, and he don't get erased with the rest of this timeline, then I'll do it. Otherwise, I won't. No way."
The look Gaster gave him was long and hard. Sans did not break his defiant gaze. At least, not until the slap came.
It was an especially hard blow, and Sans fell to the floor with a cry, a hand flying up to cradle his cheekbone. His shoulders sagged; he could only act brave for so long.
His creator's shadow loomed over him. "You will initiate a True Reset."
A hand still pressed to his stinging cheekbone, Sans shook his head violently. "No. I'm not gonna do it. I don't wanna!"
"How, then, do you propose we shatter the Barrier?"
"If Papyrus ain't gonna be there, then I don't even care about the Surface," Sans shot back.
Gaster stared at him long and hard. Then he turned away. "You do recall. What I told you once long ago?
"I do not always need your explicit consent in these experiments. I do not need your participation. If you refuse. There are. Always other options." Sans froze, and Gaster looked back at him. "I have two subjects, Sans, not one."
Sans didn't dare say a word.
"I may have to start from scratch, allow your brother to develop a tolerance for the Determination solution as I did with you. But there is still plenty of it left. Far more than enough. And he is so small. Perhaps. He will not require quite as much."
Now Sans shook his head violently. "I dropped out of school so you wouldn't hurt him. You said you weren't gonna make him do those. You promised."
"And my promise remains, so long as you participate, Sans. So then. What shall it be?"
Sans looked down at his toes, dejected, eyelights gone dark. It always came down to this, at the end of the day. "If I Reset. Is there… any chance we could bring him with us?"
Gaster paused. He seemed to think for a very long time. "You are the anomaly," he said at last, his tone pensive. "All of time is in your hands. It may be possible."
When Sans initiated the Reset, he told himself, he would think of his brother. He would think only of his brother. He would do it for his brother. And maybe, just maybe, if he kept the thought of his brother in his head, he would be able to bring him back with them.
Sans drew in a deep breath, and nodded. "I… okay." Pause. "But… I don't think it's gonna work."
Gaster lifted a brow. "You don't think. It will work?"
Sans shook his head. "Somethin' feels wrong."
Snort. "And you're the expert on the subject."
Sans didn't answer that. "My head really hurts," he admitted.
"Yes. You have the Void pouring into your head. That is hardly a surprise."
"Oh."
Gaster paused. "When I first began to come down here. I suffered terrible headaches too. But you get used to it. Now. Are you ready?"
Sans faltered. Then he nodded. "What do I do?"
Magic hands settled themselves firmly on his two shoulders, easing him gently forward. "Concentrate. The Reset should come to you naturally, if you allow it. Call on the energy from the Void, on your magic, on your Determination. You are the anomaly. Because the Reset is so huge in scale, we will be relying on the time energy to help us along. The Void feeds on excess time. That worker we passed mentioned dangerous radiation, if you recall. That "radiation" –– "radiation" is not entirely accurate, but it suits the naïveté of those workers – is given off by the Void. You may be more susceptible to detecting it, being an anomaly. Few workers have access to this level; only some of the most qualified monsters are able to work here. The CORE is a well-built structure, and the "radiation" given off by the Void is contained to this level alone – unless. Of course. You initiate a powerful Reset. Now. Go on."
The magic hands let him go. Sans gripped the railing on either side of him – the gap was just wide enough for his small body – and he closed his eyes. If he moved even a centimetre forward, then his toes would be hanging out over the edge of the catwalk.
He concentrated. He called on his Determination, felt it burn inside him. He called on his magic. Even with his eyes closed, a bright cyan flame was kindled in his left socket. He gasped in shock; magic seared through his marrow with more power, more heat, than ever before. His soul flickered rapidly just under his ribcage; its dull glow grew a little brighter.
"Excellent, Sans. g…" Gaster's voice was faint in the background, and rapidly fading away.
He called on the Void.
And the Void answered.
What followed was the strangest sensation Sans had ever experienced in his life – the searing hot of his magic began to combine with the power of the Void. He gathered the time energy to him, and it was cold, so very, very cold; and the cold did not overpower the heat, nor vice versa. Instead he felt both of them, icy hot and burning cold, at once. Inside him, his magic pressed against the insides of his bones until it felt they would explode in a shower of dust.
" . . . "
He tried to Reset the world.
But it refused.
FLOOM.
The explosion was so powerful it knocked Sans clean off his feet, throwing his backwards. It came with a blinding light, and Sans screwed his eyes shut and shielded them even as he flew through the air. He flew through the air for a very long time. Long enough that he had time to wonder if he had gotten his directions mixed up, and that he wasn't flying backwards but falling down, down into the darkness and the nothing, for surely he should have run into something by now.
And in his head, he could hear the universe screaming.
It must have been a minute before he finally hit the wall behind him, hard. Sans cried out in pain as his bones made impact. He slid down to the floor beneath him and lay there for a moment, slumped on the catwalk.
Somehow, the catwalk was still there.
Sans moaned. When he opened his eyes, another full minute later, he was met only with blackness. He wondered if he had gone fully blind – he even touched his left eye to make sure it was open.
Then, the darkness began to recede, pulling back into to the Void. Sans stumbled to his feet, surprised his legs could hold him so easily, and inched towards the railing as his vision cleared. He stood on tiptoe to lean over the edge. What he saw then, he could not describe. The nothing had escaped, leaked out of the tear, and now it was returning home, but it seemed to have taken something with it. Sans could feel it.
Time cried out. It had been hurt, and now it was hastening to stitch itself back together, and Sans could feel it.
Gaster. Where was Gaster? He'd forgotten Gaster.
He looked wildly around him, and the world gave a great shudder that nearly knocked him off his feet again.
Here is a small fact: when you have all of time and space and the lack of time and space pouring into your head all at once, you sometimes find yourself knowing things, with an overwhelming certainty with which you surprise yourself.
Sans knew that Gaster had fallen, and that he was gone.
Another fact: even when you have all of time and space and the lack of time and space pouring into your head all at once, you do not know everything.
Sans did not know if Gaster having fallen and being gone was going to last.
But he did know one thing, and it was something he knew at his very core – that he had a chance.
Sans started to run.
Then the darkness came.
oOo
Gaster was falling.
He was screaming.
His employees fell and screamed along with him.
They screamed, and they fell, and they did not stop.
oOo
He woke up in his bedroom. Papyrus was sitting on his bed reading from one of his picture books. His face lit up when he saw his older brother sitting up on his own bed and he shot to his feet, bouncing up and down on the spot. "YOU'RE AWAKE! YOU WERE SLEEPING FOREVER AND NOW YOU'RE AWAKE! SANS! SANS SANS SANS SANS – " Then his brow furrowed, and he stopped bouncing. "Sans? What's wrong?"
Seeing his brother, seeing that he was all right, made him relax slightly. Sans realised he was dizzy. He brought a hand to his head and sank back down to the bed, closing his eyes a moment. In an instant, his brother had scrambled to his side, eyes wide with more concern than any three-year-old should be capable of. "Saaans? You're scaring me!"
"I'm okay, Paps," he muttered, reaching out to pet his brother's skull. "Jus' tired. Got a bit of a headache."
Papyrus tilted to his head to the side, bearing striking resemblance to a curious puppy monster. "Me, too," he said, as though he'd only just realised it. "I feel very funny."
Sans forced himself to sit up a little straighter as he remembered himself, and the desperation began to kick back in again. "Listen, Paps. We gotta go."
"Where?"
"Just… we gotta go." Sans stumbled to his feet, and Papyrus, dutifully, backed up. "Right now. C'mon. We're gonna pack our bags and go. Put some of your things in your backpack." It had been Sans' backpack, once, but after he'd stopped going to school, it had mostly become Papyrus'.
Now, Papyrus just stared at him in confusion. Sans had to suppress a growl of frustration. "Come on, Papyrus."
Papyrus looked frightened, and with a huff, Sans knelt in front of his brother, placing his hands on his shoulders. "Listen. We're gonna go, and we're not coming back. We're not gonna stay here anymore. But we have to go, and we have to go now; we don't got much time. Gaster might come back. I… I don't… know really." He had to fumble for the name a moment before he said it.
"What?"
Sans sighed. "Gaster. Our… dad, Paps."
"What dad?"
Those words stopped Sans cold.
"Y'know," he said, frowning. "Our… our daddy? Paps, what–– "
Papyrus whimpered. "Saans? You said we had to go now. My head is still hurting."
Focus, Sans. "Okay," he said, running a hand down his face. "Okay. You sit and relax, huh? I'll pack. You just sit right there and let me do it."
Sans looked around the room, then began to stuff some of Papyrus' favourite toys into the backpack; his crayons; a few changes of clothes. There was a drawing sitting on their desk, done in messy crayon scribbles, that Papyrus must have made while Sans was out at the CORE. Or while he'd been asleep, apparently. Sans added it to the backpack without looking at it. The whole time, Papyrus sat on his bed, hugging his knees to his chest and watching Sans with huge eyes.
Once Sans had stuffed the backpack nearly to its full capacity, leaving a bit of extra room for food, he took a moment to suck in several deep breaths. "Okay," he said. "Okay, let's go. We're gonna go get some food, and then we can go."
"Why would there be food here?" Papyrus piped up.
Sans blinked at him. "Why wouldn't there be? There's food downstairs, in the, in the fridge, and in the cupboards. Those crackers you like, we'll take some packs of them."
"But… we don't… live here…. "
This was wrong. This was very, very wrong, in every sense of the word. "Where d'you think we live?" Sans asked carefully.
"I… I don't know. I don't know. I'm hungry." Papyrus sniffled dramatically, and Sans held out a hand. Papyrus took it, allowing his big brother to lead him out of the room and into the hall.
"It's okay. We're gonna go downstairs, and then we're gonna get some food, and then... "
They arrived at the top of the stairs. The realisation hit him then.
The house was wrong.
It was empty. The wallpaper was peeling, and the carpeted floor in the hall was faded and smelled mouldy. All the furniture was gone, and the windows were boarded up. When Sans turned around, he realised their bedroom was empty too––the desk, the beds, the very beds they'd just been sitting on a moment ago––gone.
Suppose time were damaged. Suppose it were damaged beyond repair, great feats undone and unaccomplished. Events that never took place. One would think all of time would collapse, no? And yet the universe carries on, perseveres.
Sans tightened his grip on Papyrus' hand until his brother tugged it away with a small whine of protest. Was he going to disappear too? Was Papyrus? What exactly had happened, down there in the heart of the CORE? If Gaster had fallen, what did that mean for them? For the entire Underground?
At the bottom of the stairs, the door creaked open. A large brown bird monster stepped into the house, a clipboard tucked under their wing. They seemed distracted, surveying the house and muttering to themselves. Sans and Papyrus could only stare at them in confusion.
After a minute, the bird monster looked upstairs, gaze falling on the two children standing there on the landing. At first they squawked in surprise, then a mean glint came to their eyes, and they snapped their beak angrily. "And what exactly are you two starlings doing here?"
Sans was dazed, looking down at the monster, who was now making their way up the stairs. They stopped after a few steps, glaring up at them. "I… we… "
"This house is going up for sale," the monster snapped at them –– quite literally. "This is a big house. Could easily divide it up. House lots of families." Click, click. "Useful. Don't know why it's been empty for this long. Don't need a couple of homeless orphan brats holing up in here." They flapped their wings, nearly dropping their clipboard. "Out! Fly!"
Sans took the stairs slowly, one at a time, Papyrus just behind him.
His mind was racing in confusion –– why was Gaster's house for sale, and why had it been empty when he'd just been living in it this morning? What was happening to their house? Why couldn't Papyrus remember Gaster, remember… what did Papyrus remember? What did Papyrus know or think, if Gaster, their creator, was missing from the three and a half years that made up his memory? And amongst his confusion his head ached, the world still seemed to shake and tremble, and at the centre of the quake thrummed an all-encompassing emptiness.
Then the bird monster just snapped their beak, and Sans realised they had reached the foot of the stairs and were being chased to the door, and that Papyrus was gripping his hand again and sniffling. "That's enough! Out Fly! Fly!"
They stepped out of the house, the realtor slamming the door shut at their heels, and in Sans' mind the world seemed to give one last, great, shudder, a stone hitting water after a long plummet down a well. Everything fell still and quiet.
Papyrus tugged on Sans' sleeve, snapping him from his reverie. "Sans? I'm HUNGRY."
Sans glanced down at him. "Yeah?" He smiled a little. "Okay. Sure, Paps. Let's… let's find somethin' to eat, huh?"
Papyrus nodded. "Where?"
Ah. Yes. They had no money.
That might be a little problematic.
Gaster was gone. It was strange, Sans thought, just how certain he was of it, for surely he should have doubts. Yet the fact remained in his mind; the knowledge seemed almost innate.
Sans tightened his grip on Papyrus' hand, chose a random direction, and started walking. He was vaguely aware that Papyrus was asking him questions––"Sans, where are we? What's going on? I'm HUNGRYYY… "––but for now he blocked them out. He was aware he needed to think, to sit down and think and figure something out, but for now, Papyrus was whining that he was hungry. For now, he had to find food. From there he'd… he'd figure something out.
He was almost eleven, for god's sakes. He could figure something out.
They hadn't been wandering for long before Papyrus' feet began to drag, his voice a whine that was threatening to blow into a full-out temper tantrum.
"Shh," he muttered, distracted.
"SAAAAAAAAANNNSSS….! "
Dammit.
Sans hesitated before tugging his brother over to a wall. He looked around. The street they were on was deserted, and Sans supposed it must be fairly late––not late enough for everyone to be in bed, but enough so that most people were in their homes. And, luckily, not so very late that all the shops were closed.
"Okay, Papyrus," he said, fighting hard to keep the impatience from his tone and kneeling down to his brother's level. "Okay. Let's get somethin' to eat now."
Papyrus perked up immediately, bouncing up and down on the spot. "Yay! Can we get CUPCAKES, Sans? PLEASE? Can we can we can we can we?
Sans looked around again. "Let's see what there is." He shrugged the backpack off his shoulders. "Here, you look after this." Papyrus took the backpack and put it on, looking pleased that he could be trusted with such an important item. "How about I give you a piggyback ride, bro?"
Papyrus squealed and clapped his hands, moving to scrabble onto Sans' back even before his brother crouched down. Little arms wrapped themselves securely around his neck as Sans hoisted him up, holding onto his ankles so that he wouldn't slip and fall––Papyrus had a tendency to squirm around and lose his grip.
Once he was sure he had a secure hold on Papyrus, Sans straightened and resumed walking – slowly and casually at first, then picking up pace until his strides were so rapid he nearly tripped over his own feet and had to slow down again.
"What are we DOING?" he heard Papyrus ask, but the words washed over him and he kept walking, looking for the right shop. He'd need a store with outdoor displays, he thought, and so far, the only such places were a bookshop, a stationary shop, and a beauty shop advertising a variety of scale creams. Perhaps a little ironically, New Home was the only part of the Underground Sans wasn't at least 90% familiar with, and he was starting to wish he'd spent more time wandering its streets now.
Another five minutes of walking, and Sans saw it––a small bakery, at the corner of the next block. The monster that ran it seemed to be closing shop, but a display stand of the day's last baked goods remained outside the front window. Baked goods that would probably end up in the trash in a few short minutes. It was barely stealing in the first place, and he hadn't much time. Sans ducked into a side street, poking his head out to survey his surroundings. The main road was empty.
"Hey, Paps? I know ya said you wanted a cupcake, but how about some donuts instead?"
Papyrus cheered, and Sans promptly shushed him. "Okay, bro, just… if we want 'em, we gotta… we gotta be quiet. Pretend like, um, we're Royal Guards, okay? We're Royal Guards staking out a scary human enemy."
"OKAY!"
"That means no talking." He bit back his annoyance, and Papyrus fell silent.
Sans looked around one more time. Still, he saw no-one. The display stand was still there, and the baker seemed to have disappeared, probably out back. This was his chance.
He could have teleported, he knew, but the risks of missing were too great. So, giving Papyrus' ankle a squeeze, Sans looked left and right one final time before bolting forward. Papyrus was bouncing on his back, giggling, and now the shop was just two or three strides away, and he was finally going to get something to eat, and Papyrus would be happy. Just a few more seconds…
Sans' fingers closed around two large donuts, the kind that were covered in powdered sugar and stuffed with jam, Papyrus' favourites. Grinning to himself victoriously, he turned on his heel to run back the way he'd come––
In the exact same moment that Papyrus let out a shriek of "SANS!", a large, long-fingered hand came down on his right shoulder.
The hand spun him around, causing him to drop one of the donuts on the floor. "Hey - !" Sans struggled to break free, but the hand's grip was strong, the long fingers wrapping themselves around his clavicle, and Sans didn't have much fight in him.
He struggled and writhed anyway.
The monster that glared down at him looked a little unusual, clearly the spawn of a cross-species couple somewhere along the line. He was part-Froggit, it seemed, but he stood on knobbly, overlong hind legs that looked as if they should not have been able to support the weight of his upper body, and he stood tall, almost as tall as Gaster.
"Excuse me, young sir." His voice was a low and threatening croak. "I hope you were planning to pay for those."
Sans struggled, but the grip on his clavicle tightened, causing him to wince in pain and still somewhat. The monster's other hand took his wrist, raising Sans' arm slightly. On his back, Papyrus remained mercifully silent, probably too frightened to say anything. "Leggo of me––"
The frog-like monster's vocal sac throbbed in irritation, in sync with the vein that pulsated at his temple. "Don't often get little thieves around here. Ribbit, ribbit. Why don't we head inside and give a nice call to the Royal Guard? Sure we'll be able to sort things out." He began to drag Sans towards the front door of his shop.
The Guard?! Sans began to struggle again, and Papyrus started whimpering. Sans wasn't sure if he was saying anything or not. "No––no, we weren't stealing––c'mon, mister, let go––"
The grip on Sans' wrist tightened now. "Oh? Ribbit, ribbit. Well, unless you plan on paying, young sir, then––"
Sans panicked. Screwing his eyes shut in a desperate sort of prayer, he called on his magic, and in a split second he shortcut.
He felt it happen at once, felt the flare of magic inside him, felt space shift around him. All of a sudden there were no sticky, long-fingered hands holding him, and when he opened his eyes, he was on the side street he'd ducked into just before. And he'd managed to bring Papyrus with him in one piece.
And the donut.
He was still holding the remaining donut.
Sans fell to his knees, and his brother slid off his back and got up as if to look around.
Just around the corner, he heard the clank of armour, the heavy steps of Royal Guards' boots. Sans cursed under his breath and pulled Papyrus over to him, holding him close to his chest. He willed himself to breathe quieter as the Guards passed their hiding place and stopped, having apparently reached the bakery.
He had to get out of here, somehow, but this was a dead-end street. Maybe if he waited until the Guard were gone, and prayed they wouldn't bother to look around the corner ––ha!––he could make a break for it? Or he could shortcut again, but he dismissed the possibility soon as it came to him. To shortcut, he'd need a clear mental image of his destination, and he knew he wasn't familiar enough with New Home to do that. Travelling to Hotland was an option, but Sans could scarcely teleport ten feet across a room; he didn't trust himself to travel long distances, especially not when he had Papyrus to account for.
"Sans?" whispered Papyrus.
"Shh," he said automatically.
Papyrus fell silent.
The clanking of the Guards' boots resumed and headed off in the other direction, but their steps were slow. They must have begun to look for them. Sans held his breath, and pulled Papyrus closer to him, so he wouldn't move around too much.
What he didn't anticipate was Papyrus beginning to whine again: "Saaans?"
"Shh," he admonished, just as Papyrus began to cry.
The clanking footsteps faltered.
"Papyrus, shush," he hissed, which only made Papyrus cry harder. The footsteps drew closer.
"I wanna go hooome, I'm SCARED, I don't know what's happening, and you STEALED and stealing's BAD, I'm SCAAAAARED––" Papyrus' whining gave way to unintelligible wails.
"Papyrus, stop crying," he said fiercely, even though he knew it was inevitable, the Guards had heard them and would catch them now and they'd––they'd––what did the Royal Guard do with young shoplifters anyway? Deliver them to the King, throw them in the dungeon? What if Gaster came back, crawled out of the Void like the cat in the cartoon, able to survive anything? Would they send them back to Gaster? That would be even worse.
Papyrus howled.
Sans knew capture was inevitable. But something inside him snapped, and next thing he knew, he was yelling, too. He screamed the words. "SHUT UP PAPYRUS!"
Papyrus fell into shocked silence, his eye sockets brimming with tears, in the exact same moment Sans' magic flared and burst around him in an eruption of magic and Determination.
When he opened his eyes, he and Papyrus were sitting huddled in an unfamiliar alleyway in New Home. Sans had no idea how he'd gotten here; he must have visited this alley a long time ago, the memory of it imprinted into his subconscious.
Everything was quiet, and when he craned his neck up high and squinted, the ceiling here was much lower down than it had been in the previous street, near the bakery. It stank here, the ground was covered in litter, and the wall behind him was plastered in peeling old posters and covered in graffiti. Moreover, whereas that street had had a dead end, this one clearly branched off into an entire network of alleys and pathways half-hidden. A whole city of dodgy back-streets for the Underground's poor and destitute. He must have shortcut quite a long way.
The Guards would not find them here.
Now, Papyrus was sniffling quietly and had taken to hugging his knees, looking like he didn't give a care in the world that he and his brother had just teleported across the capital, if he'd even noticed at all.
Dammit.
"Ah, geez, Papyrus. Hey. Hey, c'mere, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it… "
Papyrus gave a pitiful sniffle, but he looked up, rubbing at his eye sockets. Sans held out his arms, and Papyrus went to them, throwing his arms around his neck. Sans rubbed his brother's skull the way he liked, until Papyrus' tears ceased, murmuring apologies all the while.
"I-it's okay," Papyrus mumbled into the fabric of his T-shirt.
"I know you're scared," Sans mumbled. "I am, too. I'm still tryin' to figure out what's going on." He paused. "Let's eat our donut and just... figure somethin' out, I guess, or somethin', huh? We'll find a place to sleep."
Papyrus wiggled free. "Sleep where?"
"Uh… somewhere around here, I guess." Sans shrugged. "Still got your backpack?"
"Mhmm!" Papyrus nodded importantly and clutched the backpack's straps.
"'kay." Sans figured he should run an inventory or something; he hadn't been paying all that much attention when packing. He tore the donut in two, and handed the larger half to Papyrus, who devoured it. He himself picked at his own half donut, nibbling on the deep-fried dough and letting the jam leak out.
He had to think––he wasn't a baby bones anymore.
He had to think.
Gaster had fallen. Sans hadn't seen it per se, but it would have been too dark to see him fall anyway. Some kind of magic, or perhaps his Determination, told Sans he had fallen, and he could picture it to boot, picture the darkness rushing to meet him, swallowing him up. It was a very nice mental image, better even than the picture he'd once drawn of Gaster as a pile of dust.
When Sans tried to think of him, now, the sensation was strange. He could remember everything, technically. The memories were clear, but they felt they'd happened a terribly long time ago. And there was, at the same time, a hole in his mind.
So, the facts:
The house hadn't been lived in for years.
Papyrus couldn't seem to remember a thing.
Upon the Reset, a great explosion of time energy will occur. The nothing, the emptiness of the Void will devour the Underground, and erase it from time.
So that was that, then.
But why could he remember?
Sans hadn't been able to Reset, so he wasn't an anomaly… was he? He'd failed.
As I anticipated. A regular failure.
Had he really caused an explosion of Void energy? At least that would have been pretty cool.
But that only led to more questions: why hadn't Sans been erased if he'd been right there on the brink of the Void with Gaster? And how big had the explosion had been? Had it even spread beyond that room?
The doors… Gaster had said something about doors.
The CORE is quite a well-built structure, and the "radiation" given off by the Void is contained to this level alone.
So the explosion of Void energy had been contained, then? He hadn't been strong enough for it to properly spread, or something, not strong enough to Reset.
Sans sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. He was tired, and his headache was getting worse. He didn't know what he was thinking. He didn't even know if his thoughts made any sense. Probably not.
It probably didn't matter, anyway.
He had greater things to worry about, now. He had to look after Papyrus. He would need to find them food, and shelter, and clothes. He would need money. A job. He didn't really care how he got it, or what kind of job it was, as long as it kept him and Papyrus alive.
Sans looked into the depths of the alleyway. There was nobody in sight here, but deeper into the labyrinth of narrow paths and back streets, there might be people who would be willing to give them a helping hand. Maybe he wouldn't find them tonight, or even tomorrow, but he would find them.
He had to figure something out, he thought. And he would. He would. Just… after he… rested…
"Saaans?" It was a small, subdued whine. His baby brother tugged on his shirt. When Sans glanced down at him, Papyrus had stuck his sleeve in his mouth and was chewing on it. It was a nervous habit Sans himself had yet to outgrow. Heh. Papyrus must have picked up on it.
Sans smiled down at him softly. "Yeah, bro?"
"You look sleepy."
Sans blinked and laughed a little. "Yeah, I am a bit."
"I'm sleepy too."
He ran a hand over Papyrus' skull. "I know, Paps. Let's just do our inventory, and then we can go to sleep. 'k?"
"Okay," agreed Papyrus, sitting up a little straighter and recognising this as an Extremely Important Task.
One by one, Sans went through the items in their backpack. There were two shirts of Papyrus' and one pair of his pyjama bottoms. One of his own T-shirts and a set of pyjamas with rocket ships on them, and a sweater for each of them. He'd also packed a box of Papyrus' crayons, three markers, one smiley-face pencil, an eraser in the shape of a bone, two toy cars and a toy truck, a bouncy ball, and Papyrus' stuffed bunny. When he pulled the stuffed animal out, Papyrus squealed in pleasure and hugged it tightly to his chest.
And, slightly crushed at the bottom of the bag, a sheet of paper. Right, he'd packed Papyrus' drawing. As the toddler fussed over his bunny, Sans pulled out the drawing and looked at it.
And froze.
The drawing was done in messy three-year-old crayon scribbles. It was a picture of two smiling skeleton children, one slightly bigger than the other and with a rounder skull. The little skeletons were standing on either side of a larger skeleton, and were holding the larger skeleton's hands. The larger skeleton was smiling widest of all, and he wore a pair of glasses and a white coat. At the top of the drawing, Papyrus had started to write something in his three-year-old's scrawl, then violently crossed it out with the fury of his orange crayon.
"Paps?" Sans asked quietly.
"Nyeh?"
"What's… what's this?"
Papyrus looked up from smoothing out his bunny's fur. "Oh! That's a family I drawed when you were sleeping! There's me, and you, and, um, I dunno who the other skele is. I think I must have maked him up."
"Is he a… a daddy?"
"Mhmm!"
"There's no mommy," Sans observed, voice low.
"Yeah, I didn't draw a mommy."
"How come?" he pressed.
"Because I didn't want to," was the sensible reply.
"Ah. Right."
"Do you like it? I did the colouring very careful."
Sans laughed weakly. "Yeah, Paps. It's… it's real nice." Papyrus looked pleased with himself, and took initiative in beginning to re-pack their backpack.
As Papyrus packed, Sans let out a whooshing breath he hadn't known he was holding.
Sans had spent the first eleven years of his life wishing for another one; on bad days he'd gone so far as to wish he'd never been born. Now he had the chance to pretend none of it had ever happened.
A part of him wanted to forget Gaster, to let the empty spots take over his memory and start afresh. He would be free, after all––free from bad dreams and ill memories, free to pretend like he was a true monster.
And yet…
Sans lifted a hand to cover his left eye experimentally. Except for the faint spots of light that slipped through his phalanges, he couldn't see anything, the vision on his right side remaining totally dark. He dropped his hand to his lap, dejected: he'd forgotten what it was like to see out of both eyes anyway.
From here, he looked down at his arms, pockmarked with little scars and cuts, the bones rough and bumpy.
He wrapped his arms around himself, his self that would remain this small forever, allowing a dim blue glow to kindle in his single good eye. He couldn't bring himself to glow very brightly.
He was like this because of him. Because of Gaster. A broken doll that didn't even belong to anyone anymore.
This body––this tiny, fragile body––had once been Gaster's. Gaster's to hit, Gaster's to carve up, Gaster's to snap the bones of as easily as if they were toothpicks, Gaster's to strap down to the examination table and inject with Determination and all manner of experimental drugs.
But Gaster was gone now.
Sans lifted a hand to the top of his skull and ran it down his body, stopping at the base of his ribcage. His ribs, his hand, his eye, his body, his, his, his, and he found himself––himself!–smiling.
Gaster had once owned this body, but not anymore. He was gone, and Sans had taken it back from him.
Sans had taken something of Gaster's and made it his own.
That was far, far better than letting himself forget.
"Sans, this place is stinky," Papyrus was saying, snapping Sans from his reverie.
Sans made a show of sniffing the air. "Phew, it is, huh? Wanna find a better place?"
"Yes." Papyrus secured the backpack onto his back.
"Okay, let's go." Sans cast the paper one last glance, then, picking up the pencil, which had rolled out of Papyrus' reach, hastily scrawled "don't forget" at the top of the page before stuffing the drawing into his pocket.
Sans crouched down for his brother to climb onto him and ride piggyback again, but this time Papyrus clung to his front, giggling. Because I already went on your back, brother!
Sans laughed a little, standing up. "Yeah, you're right, bro. We don't wanna skull-k around in a yucky, stinky dump like this."
Papyrus made a high-pitched squawk of protest, and Sans laughed louder, tickling his sternum. "Aw, c'mon, Paps. Ain't I ticklin' your funny bone?"
"Hmph," said Papyrus, and refused to say anything more for the grand total of ten seconds. When he spoke again, it was only two words: "I'm TIRED."
"Me, too," Sans murmured, walking to the end of the alleyway. He was presented with a fork in the path. "Left or right, whaddya think?"
"Left! Because you draw with your left hand!"
Sans laughed softly at his toddler's logic, and abided by his request. The network of alleyways expanded here, the city within the city finally revealing itself, passages going in all directions, some made by buildings, others by fences, still others by rock faces. Sans ducked into a small cavern that quickly way gave larger one.
He continued exploring, alley after alley, up and down ill-carved sets of stairs, wandering even as he didn't know what exactly he was looking for. Somewhere private, maybe. Cosy. As cosy as an alleyway could be, heh. His standards were plummeting. Papyrus was half-asleep, his head weighing heavy on his shoulder.
At last he rounded a corner into yet another alleyway, this one a dead end. It would do for this first night.
Sans shut his eyes briefly and leaned his forehead against one high, weathered stone wall, breathing hard. It wasn't until Papyrus began to squirm amidst his soft, constant whimpers that Sans realised his brother was pressed up between the wall and his ribcage. He half-rolled, half-turned on the spot so that the back of his skull rested against the wall instead, then sunk down to sit on the pavement, cradling Papyrus close.
Only then did he notice the other children huddled towards the back of the alleyway, against the opposite wall. There were three of them in all––a toad girl, an insect-like monster, and a cat boy with soot-coloured fur. Or perhaps it had once been white.
The children wore ill-fitting clothes, and seemed none too warm. They'd gathered around them piles of old rags and flattened cardboard boxes like a kind of nest. None of them looked to be more than fourteen years old.
Sans watched them solemnly as Papyrus' soft, erratic whimpers gave way to rhythmic breathing––and locked eyes with the cat boy. Sans would have pegged him at around twelve. He couldn't have guessed how long they stared into each other's eyes, but after a long stretch of time, the cat boy slid a slab of cardboard and a few rags over to Sans.
Neither child smiled.
But Sans set Papyrus down on the cardboard mattress, placing as many rags over his small body as he could. Then, drawing his brother close, he lay down himself, curled up on his side, and fell asleep.
When he woke up, it was morning, and the children were gone.