Disclaimer: I do not own Undertale.
Iterations
Reset
Sans had fallen asleep on the couch.
Seeing him now, she realized that the familiar sight, was not familiar at all in this iteration. She suddenly felt like a terrible friend. Sans had been working non-stop. She had never seen him so active. While he still went from job to job as usual, his frequent breaks had ceased living up to their name. Compared to her re-telling in their nightly sessions, the holes in his memory seemed obvious and gaping. She could tell that he found the idea hard to accept after spending so much time thinking he was the only one in the know. While having no control over resets made him feel vulnerable, the thought that he was missing much more than he had anticipated was disheartening. It was all sorts of heartbreaking whenever she returned late just to see the light from beneath his bedroom door. Sometimes, she sat against it, listening to the sound of rustling paper and scratching pens. He was trying so hard.
It worried her, especially since she could remember multiple iterations where he had simply given up, watching her– not her, the thing that sometimes possessed her – as she exterminated the monsters in the Underground.
Frisk was filled with determination. She would cheer him up and, hopefully, let him know it was okay to take his time fitting everything together.
She put on the black hoodie– the only borrowed article of clothing that she refused to give back– and laced up her boots tightly. She was going to make him a whole 'Be Happy Please' gift basket. She frowned. She was not quite as bad as Asgore when it came to naming, but the name was still horrible. She made a mental note to work on it. Carefully, she pulled her blanket over him, wondering if skeletons even got cold. She made it two steps away before she doubled back and tucked him in. Then, she stepped out into the cold weather outside.
Frisk was walking back, gift basket in hand. She was still going over potential names for it. In it, she had two premium bottles of ketchup (apparently the brand mattered though she could never tell the difference), an authentic leather-bound papyrus paper journal (she hoped he would prefer the organized quality of a journal to his many stacks of loose paper), a fountain pen engraved with his name in comic sans font (she thought he'd appreciate the pun), and a pack of socks and construction paper (to add to the trash tornado in his room).
She never saw Undyne coming.
Frisk woke up in a bed of golden flowers.
She sat up and sighed, "And things were going so well."
Sans woke up wrapped up like a burrito on the couch. The kid had some serious tucking in skills. He rolled off the couch and fell onto the floor with a loud thud. He wriggled out of the warm cocoon. It was the best nap he had had in a long time. Turning the pinpricks of light in his eye-sockets on and off as he shook away the haze of sleep, he knew something was wrong. He could not feel Frisk at all.
He stepped through time and space to reach his brother.
He reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. "hey–"
"AHHH! SANS! I HAVE TOLD YOU NOT TO SNEAK UP BEHIND ME! YOU NEARLY CAUSED ME TO RUIN MY SNOW SCULPTURE OF THE HUMAN!" True to his word, there was now a snow sculpture that looked like Frisk between the snow sculpture of Papyrus and the lump of snow with 'Sans' written on it. If the unsettled feeling in his bones was not there, he was sure he would find his brother's attempts to include the kid in their lives amusing.
"my bad. is the kid with you?" He already knew the answer.
"NO! I WOULDN'T WANT TO RUIN THE SURPRISE! THE SCULPTURE IS A GIFT!"
"that's great, pap. do you know where she is?"
"SHE WAS NOT HOME WHEN I LEFT. SHE IS NO DOUBT FROLICKING ABOUT, PUTTING MY PUZZLE-MAKING LESSONS TO GOOD USE."
Oh no. "...any chance you know where undyne is?"
Papyrus lit up at the thought of his role model. "SHE IS SUPPOSED TO BE PATROLLING AROUND SNOWDIN TODAY. APPARENTLY– "
Sans did not stay to hear the rest.
The resets were never automatic. Whether it was caused by Frisk's death or forced, there was a period of time before everything was reset. Finding Frisk face down with a spear through her back, he knew she had been gone for a while. He turned her. She was holding a basket to her chest. He picked her up and teleported to his room. He sighed, laying her down on his bed. It was time to wait out the rest of this run.
The basket slipped out of her arms and toppled off the bed, spilling across the floor.
"oh, kid." He murmured, picking up a piece of paper from the mess. It had the phrases 'Be Happy Please,' 'It'll Be Alright' and 'We've Got This!' all crossed out before 'Be Happy Please' was re-written in the space left in the corner. He sat on the floor and looked through the rest. He downed both ketchup bottles immediately. Crumpled all the construction paper and tossed it into his trash tornado along with the unopened pack of socks. He laughed bitterly as he saw his name on the pen. He opened the journal and laughed more genuinely. On the first page was a recognizable but crude drawing of his brother with a speech bubble saying 'THE GREAT PAPYRUS ON PAPYRUS PAPER? GENIUS!' He flipped the page and scribbled something down. He pulled a large black box from under his bed. Opening it, he shoved around notes and other knick knacks from previous runs until he had freed enough space to place the notebook and pen within it. Scooting it back under the bed with his foot, he glanced at the body in his bed before turning away.
He had something to do.
He was in Undyne's house less than a moment after leaving his home, not bothering with the door. The fish woman was sitting at her dining table, head in her hands.
"sup?"
She startled and looked up. "Oh. Hey Sans."
"you look a little down, buddy. want to talk about it?"
"I," she paused, shaking her head. "I'm fine."
Sans stared.
Undyne broke down. "I think I might have killed a monster!"
"...what?"
"You know that there was that human I was chasing right? I had never seen a human in real life before and she looked like the humans in Alphys' books. She kept getting away somehow and I was getting so frustrated. So I saw her today and got the jump on her."
"what does that have to do with you killing a monster?"
"I think she was one! Human souls, they're supposed to persist after death, right? But hers, it snapped in two and disappeared."
Sans' left eye took on a blue hue. "hey, buddy. it's okay. i know for a fact that it was really a human."
Her body relaxed as the tension left her body. "Really? That's a relief."
"why don't you just work off the stress like usual? i'll even be your sparring partner."
"Thanks. That actually sounds like it might help."
"that's what friends are for."
Undyne was laying on the ground at Sans' feet, unable to stand. She looked up a the skeleton with wide eyes. Other than Asgore, she had never been beaten. Even then, never so easily once she became leader of the Royal Guard. "W-what the hell, Sans?"
"enraging, isn't it? bet it hurts a bit too. you know that feeling right there? of being wronged, being hurt by someone much stronger than you, of not deserving it because you hadn't done anything wrong? i want you to remember it because that was what the human felt when you killed them."
"What..."
"you see, that human... was my friend. humans. monsters. we're all just people. we can be mean or cruel, but it all depends on choice. you, without ever exchanging a word with her, without knowing her likes or dislikes, with no regard at all to her friends or family, decided it was okay to kill her."
"Sans..."
He took a step toward her, eye-sockets pitch black. "and it wasn't. it is not okay. do you understand?"
She cringed. "I-I understand."
"good. see ya."
He turned and walked away.
Undyne would not remember.
But it made him feel better anyway.
A/N: No, this was not an excuse to have Sans dunk someone. It serves a lot of purposes. It establishes that, even with the resets, death is striking and important. Frisk and Sans are in it for the long run. There is no confusion about them being partners now. Undyne may not remember losing quite handily to Sans but the event will actually have relevance soon (next chapter in fact if things pan out the way I want them to).
Thanks for reading.
Until next time friendlies,
Dfsemina