Frisk stood and watched Alphys detach the monitors from Sans while he swung his legs around the table and jumped down. Their face contorted with worry, they and Gaster exchanged a few meaningful glances before the older skeleton walked Sans out of the lab.

Something definitely wasn't right here.

Now:

A distorted, cracked long face, echoing and shouting right through Sans' soul, a bodily horror he had never seen before. This was worse than the amalgamates, this was his friend.

"what the hell happened to you, G?"

A series of shrieks was all he got in reply, startling him and he looked for a route of escape. Powerless. No blasters. No attack. No defence. No health.

"c'mon, G, don't do this," his voice shook unnaturally, the façade of calm and collected gone out the window from what lay before him.

He felt his soul rip out of his body, another series of hysteric shrieking from Gaster—no, the creature, as it swallowed his soul full as if it were only a speck of dirt. He felt himself fade, crumble to dust, with the knowledge that he amounted to nothing, and died by the hands of his own creator.

"Sans!"

…

"Saaans!"

It was just a word now. A floating, meaningless word.

"SANS!"

Sans startled awake on the coach, finding himself clawing inwardly and calling his powers for protection, but nothing came. Breathless and on high alert, he spun around, ready to take on his attacker with absolutely nothing at all.

But, his vision started to clear. And did the specks in his vision as they started to fade, the figure in front of people paved out to be Papyrus. His brother. In his house. On his coach. He was safe.

He smiled sheepishly, "oh, uh, jeez, sorry about that pap," he admitted, flustered. The lack of powers was certainly taking its toll on him, having spent his whole life with them.

"Worry not, brother! I am assuming this was another nightmare that I, the grrreat Papyrus, pulled you right out of! Like I always do!"

Sans forced a grin, pressing a hand over his aching side, "yeah, yeah, you did it bro. won my nightmares over again."

Papyrus narrowed his eyes, "What was it about this time?"

Not wanting to press or admit what hell he had seen in his dreams, Sans simply shrugged it off, "dunno, coming out of it now and i'm starting to forget, thanks to you," he lied. Well, a half-truth. It was thanks to him he was out of it, at least.

"That's what good brothers, like me, are for!" before Sans could get a word in, Papyrus continued, "I know what will make you feel better; I will now cook you some spaghetti!"

The older brother held back a groan, "can you learn to cook something other than spaghetti."

"Not at all!"

"thought so."

When Papyrus left the room, Sans stared emptily at the door he walked out of, grasping his fingers into a fist in frustration.

I can't protect Pap like this, he thought, growing angry with himself; The second another genocidal kid drops, he'll be defenceless.

Well, sort of. Papyrus's attacks were pretty solid, it was the fact that he would never let a kid die that was the problem. Other kids had dropped down before, entered into fights with them; most of the time they had no intention to kill, but were just curious. Only the genocidal timeline did he not get back in time. He just returned to see a red scarf on top of a pile of dust, floating away into the snow…

"I've got it perfect this time, Sans! You will never be able to resist!" Papyrus chortled in the room with a plateful of spaghetti.

"that was quick, bro," perhaps he was finally getting lazy too and just microwaved it.

"Erm…well, I actually started cooking it while you were asleep…it was supposed to be a surprise, but I wanted to cheer you up!"

Sans sniggered, wincing as his wound spasmed at the movement "thanks bro, in that case resisting this will be…impastable."

"Saaans! That was terrible!"

He shrugged, "i aim to impress."

Now being faced with eating the inedible creation…well…this was a whole new level of torture. He glared at it, pushing the solidified mess around his plate.

"uh…" he tried to think of a distraction, "is that a human outside?"

Papyrus internally exploded, "A human!?" he shouted, running towards the window, and the incredibly empty streets, "Where is it?!" he paused and turned around slowly, "Sans! You! Tricked! Me!"

"dunno pap, swear I saw em hanging out by the window, must've ran away."

Papyrus stood tall and proud, "Scared of me?!" then stopped, shoulders dropping, "But I don't want them to be afraid of me…I want to be their…friend?!"

Sans sighed, shoving his now mysteriously empty plate aside, "yeah, don't you just."

To his surprise, Papyrus pushed aside his fascination with humans for a moment and plonked down next to him, "What is the matter brother? You have been rather down lately!"

huh. guess i'm getting worse at hiding things.

"s'nothing pap, just having a bad day i guess,"

"But I want to help!"

"papyrus. it's fine." you can't do anything to fix this.

"Do you need me to lend an ear!"

"no"

"Do you want me to call…Undyne!"

"no"

"Toriel?"

"no"

"Frisk?"

"definitely not"

"Gaster?"

Sans' breath hitched in his throat for a second as the nightmare flashed back to him, "…no."

"Then what do I do!"

He clenched his fists, but forced himself to relax. "listen, pap, i just need to be alone right now. i'll be fine. promise. and you know i hate making promises. so, trust me."

The younger brother looked crestfallen, but piped up enthusiastically "If that's what you want…I'll give you so much alone time you'll never see me again!"

Sans eyes shot up.

"I…am joking, of course," Papyrus' eyes narrowed, now suspicious in what was really going on in his big bro's head.

"yeah. anyway, cya," he got up from the coach, sluggishly making his way towards his room, hopefully to not be disturbed.

Reaching his room, Sans shut the wooden door with a creak and collapsed against it, exhaling a breath he had been keeping in his gut for god knows how long. He pulled his shirt up, glancing down to see what was causing so much aching. The wound looked…less healed.

"aww man," he sighed, pressing a tentative finger against it to see if it elicited any pain. Thankfully, it didn't. "gotta stop moving around, or I'll reopen the damn thing," he chastised himself, pushing away the rational thought that tried to crawl up on his back, you've done nothing but sleep since you got home.

Now that he was alone, he could finally try to regain control over his powers. Closing his eyes, he concentrated, trying to feel for it within his soul, calling out for it. He felt himself resonate with his soul, clawing at it, just a touch away from grasp, but the power just jumped away, as if teasing him.

He pushed harder, more forceful reaching for this entity within him, but it refused.

With all the strength he could muster, he bashed his head against the door and shook as he tried harder with all his might, inwardly clawing and scratching and screaming for the taunting blue energy that refused to come out.

A familiar shooting pain in his side made him redirect all his strength to his body, clenching onto the wound that suddenly attacked him.

son of a…

Exhausted, he slumped against the door, mindlessly looking into the floor, fruitlessly deciding what to do next. He was screaming at himself inwardly to regain control over his powers, but his body outwardly was screaming at him to stop in fear of ripping open his wound.

But decidedly, the safety of everyone else had a greater importance than his wound wanting to reopen. So, he tried again.

Despite his best efforts to tidy the kitchen in the happiest of moods, Papyrus couldn't help but overhear the roaring of anger followed by smashing coming from upstairs.

His brother wanted to be left alone, and was likely venting his frustration in his room and didn't need him to come in and ruin it. Stupid old Papyrus…

Sans had lost his powers, sure, but this type of anger was something he never witnessed from him. Except, well, once, when they were a lot younger, but…that doesn't matter anymore.

As Papyrus closed a cupboard, he jolted in startlement as another crash jumped him, nearly dropping a plate. He sighed, throwing himself back onto the coach and glaring at the floor, trying not to upset himself over the screaming going on upstairs, something he was powerless to help with.

The shouting and crashing had been going on for what seemed like hours now, and didn't show any signs of letting up.

He almost wished Undyne hadn't given him any leave time to look after his brother while he recovered – he almost wished he could be working instead of being at home, listening to this.

Cautiously, he noticed that there hadn't been the sound of a table hitting the wall in over 30 seconds. With piped interest, Papyrus raised his head, listening out hopefully. But no further sounds came.

Peace, at last.

"So do you think the merge has already finished? O-or is it still going?"

Gaster sighed at his assistant, swiping away the 74th result that showed exactly the same thing as all the others in the last hour, "There is no way to truly tell. We can only monitor the timelines for changes and assume the merge has completed when it lacks change."

"So…that's a no then?" she smiled gingerly, but quickly turned away when Gaster's face just remained impassive.

Having nowhere else to look except the lovely shiny black wall, she eventually gathered the courage to turn around again, except this time his face was plastered with concern.

"G-Gaster?" she asked worriedly, the display of emotion on his face was a sight rarely beheld.

"Something is wrong," he stated vacantly, but didn't make a beeline for the screens.

"Um…like what?"

"Something…entirely different, but still…powerful."

Alphys looked at him as if he was mad before looking at the screens herself. Nothing in the timelines had changed. She declared as such, "There's been no changes, i-it's all okay!" she turned to him, his expression still hadn't changed "e-everything is normal…"

He didn't answer, his eyes calculating, as if trying to decipher an encrypted message.

"Um…wh-what do we do?"

Gaster seemed to come back to his senses at that, releasing his then-solidified shoulders and reverting back to his emotionless state, "Nothing more, we continue."

Alphys was uneasy, "Uh-um, okay…?" nothing ever phased Gaster. Whatever it was, it was something big.

"Crossmatch our unique timeline events with the others, perhaps we can find at least which one we are potentially merging with," he continued, striding in front of Alphys and running through a plethora of information, all of which were coming back negative.

Alphys crossed her arms in thought, "What about narrowing down to timelines that have done the same route as us? Pacifist?"

"No, we could be merging by either one of them, whether pacifist, genocide or neutral."

"A-and if it's neutral that doesn't narrow it down at all…"

"Precisely."

"B-but there's thousands, possibly millions of timelines out there! How are we ever going to find the right one before it's too late?"

Gaster didn't have an answer for that, narrowing his eyes and simply focusing on the screens, though not particularly reading them, "It is likely we won't know in time. In fact, anything that has already happened may not be possible to undo," then he paused, "Without a reset."

"…Are you thinking of asking Frisk to reset?"

"No, I am saying it's a possibil—" he cut himself off, grunting as he almost stumbled over his own feet, a wheezing hollowness in his chest that felt as if half of his soul had just tore in half.

The smaller scientist jumped up immediately to help, "Gaster! Are you ok?" she turned to help him up, only to find a blue eye had become dim, the other man remaining silent.

The tall skeleton growled under his breath, in—frustration? His dark frayed cloak whooshed off to the side before completely vanishing in a flurry of thick black smoke. It was apparent he already knew what was happening.

Alphys put her head in her hands sorrowfully, fearing the worst, "Oh no, not again…"