Sans had never been one for hope. He had lived his entire life surrounded by the hope of breaking the barrier and seeing the surface, but he had never experienced this hope. Now, of course, he could hope in the verb sense - it was quite often that he hoped someone would or wouldn't do something - but that's not really hope, is it? Such a feeling is more of a desire or a want, and this was the feeling Sans was used to. To him, hope was something you did, not something you had. He had never understood hope as an intangible thing - as some abstract concept that you hold onto just because you can. So, one could imagine his surprise when, as he stood in the shadowed corridor, he felt hopeless.

Not having hope and being hopeless were two completely different things. Hopeless implied that hope had been there at some point, or that there was a potential for hope to be had. But not having hope meant there was no connection to hope - whatever lifeline that hope could have provided was severed before it was cast out. So, one could imagine why feeling hopeless after a lifetime of not having hope would come as a surprise.

But the biggest surprise was the reason for his hopelessness. No matter how many times the kid managed to muck things up and reset, he had believed in them. He hadn't wanted to - it would have been so much more interesting if he could have just brought himself to slaughter them the moment they stepped into the forest - but he had. After all, he had spent quite a long time around the child, and it's impossible to spend that much time with someone and not gain insight to who they really are.

So, yes, he was genuinely surprised that, even after his warning, the child had emerged from the Ruins covered in dust and oozing LOVE.

He had only bothered to stick around long enough to see Papyrus die, and he couldn't honestly justify his reasons for doing so. Had he not learned his lesson the last hundred times he saw his brother die? He could not explain why he watched it every time and made no move to stop it. Maybe he was cowardly, or maybe Frisk's perverse sense of acceptance had rubbed off on him. Either way, the fact remained that he no longer felt an intense rush of anger and seething rage. Instead, he felt like he was watching an old movie, replaying a favorite scene over and over again.

He wondered if this meant he had finally snapped. Perhaps this was the beginning stage of his insanity, and he would slowly devolve into an emotionless thing. Like Frisk… like Chara… like whoever the fuck they are now. I can see the appeal now - how easy it must be to lose yourself completely - how nice it must feel to separate yourself from these pesky feelings.

Feelings. His mind treated the word as though it were a toxin. The utter disgust in his inward tone shocked him back to reality, grounding him in his right mind. He couldn't just give up feelings; even if he didn't have a greatly varied range of them before, he still had them. Feelings - emotions - were all that were keeping him from going off the deep end. The kid didn't have those much anymore, he suspected. That was the law of LOVE. The more one inflicts pain, the easier it gets, but one's capacity to hurt cannot grow greater unless their capacity to feel grows smaller.

But, he realized, that in wondering whether or not he had gone crazy, he had answered his own question. After all, crazy people don't think they're crazy, do they? He hoped not. His brooding and contemplation were cut short by shuffling footsteps at the end of the hall. The child had arrived. When they approached, he hesitated - just for a moment. Here they were; the countdown had reached zero, but what now? He knew the number was at zero, but he did not know what that meant for the child, or for him, or for anyone. Were they simply unable to reset? Had time finally put its foot down and said, "tough luck, you made your choices," or would they still be able to reset, but with catastrophic consequences? Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe the number didn't mean anything.

But, then again, maybe it did.

He didn't know what to do, this time around. His usual strategy was to try and spark the glimmer of a good person within them, but what good would that do if resetting was out of the question? Instead, he dodged and dodged, rattling off lines that were ingrained in his memory from the countless times he had recited them. Eventually, he stopped fighting back.

"Look, kid, you clearly didn't trust me enough to take my advice, so I don't know what happens after this. If you win, you keep going until you erase the world, and who knows what happens then? If I win, you try and reset, which we also don't know the effects of. All I know is that something like that - it doesn't count down for nothing. Whatever your resets are doing, something decided it had to stop. But you didn't listen, and I don't think you can fix your mistakes now, so who even cares? You've slaughtered, what, a fourth of us? You've ripped apart how many families, ruined how many lives? I didn't bother to keep track for you this time, so I hope you can tell by all the sins crawling under your skin.

"I don't know what happens next, so let's just get it over with, huh? Make your choice, here and now. If you spare me, we both live, and we try and clean up this mess you made, huh? If you don't… well, I've heard the human race has been responsible for the extinctions of species before, so what's one more?

"Take your time, kiddo. I could stand here forever."

The time they did take, though mere seconds, felt like eons, and in this time, Sans thought of the last time he saw Papyrus. He knew the child would kill him - they had killed everything else thus far - but, for once, he realized that Papyrus knew, too. Perhaps not to the same extent, but he had definitely known. Sans had memorized his brother's stats a long time ago, both intent on questioning any changes and obsessing over how much weaker he was. But he had never thought to check them during the encounter. And what he had seen was just as interesting to him as every other mystery he was trying to solve.

PAPYRUS 5 ATK 5 DEF

Those were not the stats he remembered. For a second, he had chalked it up to memory loss - his memories weren't exactly the most reliable, these days. But then it came rushing back to him: Papyrus did not like to fight. That was the whole thing about his stats that confused most monsters. It was why Undyne was reluctant to send him into any battles. His defense was usually 2. Sans thought about that a lot. It was a strange thing, the difference one measly defense point made. Everyone thought he would break and fall down at any moment, but they seemed to think Papyrus was safe enough.

Of course, there was always the possibility of Papyrus faking his stats; monsters did it all the time to seem more intimidating or to impress others (he happened to know Undyne did it quite often) .But Papyrus never did it. He was always proud of the stats he had, which left Sans with an even bigger revelation: his brother was far more powerful than he had thought.

It was common knowledge that if a monster offers mercy, if they don't want to fight, then their defenses will weaken. But even in that moment of vulnerability and mercy, Papyrus had raised his defense. He had known full well that the child planned to kill him, yet he had greeted them with acceptance and open arms. He had tried to prepare for their violence, but it simply hadn't been enough. Sans considered that if he bothered to try, he could probably do the same, but decided it wouldn't matter. The child's LOVE was too high to be stopped. After a while, when LOVE finished pushing out emotions, it was all a numbers game, and theirs happened to be the highest.

So, he stood there, his measly stats out and honest, and waited for their decision.

He was answered with a knife.

It always felt different, he had noticed somewhere around the seventh time they had done it. Sometimes, it felt white hot against his bones, as though it were slicing up nerves he didn't have at an agonizingly slow pace. Other times, it didn't feel like much of anything, and was over before he knew what had happened. Unfortunately, this time was the former.

He took a step back, balancing himself, and, to even his own surprise, he chuckled. And he chuckled again. They were weak chuckles, wracked with hiccups of pain and impending death, but he was, in fact, laughing. He hadn't thought the kid would actually go through with it. He had believed that, like most other times, they would break out of Chara's hold and spare him. He was ready to call himself a fool, but his belief was then proven to be - at least somewhat - right.

A strangled cry burst from the child's throat, nearly smothering the noise of a knife clattering to the ground. "Sans!"

They stood still, a horrified expression plastered onto their face, and began to sign.

Sans simply shook his head. His vision was going blurry; he couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't even conjure up some fake blood like he always did. He had once theorized that if the child saw blood, as they would from a human, that they would better understand what their actions had done. He was never really sure if it had any effect.

Understanding, their voice filled the room once more, distorted and distant.

"Sans, I couldn't break free in time. I know you said no resets, but I'll just reload and try harder, okay?"

He tried to say no, tried to tell them that reloads were no different from resets, when you got down to their essence. But he couldn't. The world was spinning and he could feel his body falling apart and he just wanted it to be over.

And then the world shook. At first, he was sure only he had felt it, but Frisk's frantic voice carried through the fog once more.

"It's not working, Sans! I'm trying and nothing's happening!"

And just like that, the world cracked open. Not the earth, or the floor, or anything, but the actual world. In front of them, about five feet in the air, sat a crack in space. It was filled with darkness, and that darkness seemed to curl outward, like shadowy tentacles reaching for light. Sans stayed frozen in both awe and pain, but Frisk seemed to be continuing in their attempts to reload. Seeing what they just saw, Sans wouldn't have have been surprised if they were just trying to get rid of the awful thing, at this point.

But their attempts did not give way to success, and the more they tried, the more the world seemed to fall apart around them.

"Kid, just let it go," he rasped, pressing one hand into the trembling ground to keep upright. This was when he heard the mumbling, the quiet murmurs of a wobbly child's voice. "Reset, reset, start over, reset, reset…"

"Kid, no! You can't know what'll-" he was cut off by the slowing of time.

And then it resumed.

And slowed again.

And continued.

"Kiddo, I think you-" he doubled over in pain, feeling part of his ribs crumble to the ground. He eyed his HP. Not quite at zero, but getting there, slowly and painfully.

The world around him seemed to be splitting apart at the edges, darkness creeping in from every corner. He tried to find Frisk, but they were nowhere to be found, hidden behind some pillar of darkness… hopefully.

It was as he looked around that he saw them. Papyrus, Undyne, Tori - Toriel! That was her name and she was here! - they were all here. It was then he realized the irony of his situation. For all the times he had watched them die, they had never seen him die, and yet here they were. But how were they here? They were dead. He knew this. He knew he saw the child slaughter them or walk away covered in their dust. Through his haze he noticed something else. They were talking - not to him, and not to each other, or at least not directly. From what he could hear, Papyrus seemed to be speaking to him, but in some far away situation where he was telling him to get off the couch. Undyne seemed to be speaking to Papyrus, encouraging him during training. Toriel appeared to be fighting, but her magic disappeared inches from where it left her hands. There were other monsters here, too, but they were all doing the same thing - acting as though they were somewhere else.

He wanted to reach out to them, even if he wasn't sure they could react to or even sense him. He wanted someone to reach out to him because for once in his miserable life he was really feeling something. He didn't know what was happening. He was powerless. He was dying and he wouldn't come back. He was afraid.

He didn't want to be afraid; he didn't like the feeling. But he was. He was so afraid because the world as he knew it was falling apart and no matter where he looked, he could see nothing but the echoes of his friends, living and dying and laughing, and yet they were all so very far away. He became aware of Frisk's distant voice calling his name, but could not respond. He could not do anything but stare at the darkness that was consuming the floor and walls and air around him. And in the darkness he saw a light. It was just a pinprick, and he gave a silent chuckle as he wondered if that was what his eyes looked like to others.

But the pinprick grew larger and larger, seeming to come closer and closer, until it began forming cracks in the darkness where light could seep through. Light and Dark battled for control, each one pushing the other back and reclaiming the world as its territory, until the room went blank. Sans was not entirely sure whether the world had gone impossibly bright or impossibly dark, but the effect was the same, he supposed. He could not see anything. He could not even hear anything. As far as he could tell, he was completely and utterly alone. It was then that he took comfort in the fact that he was dying, for it would mean release from whatever new hell this was.

And then he wasn't alone. Within the void, something was forming, and as it took shape, the world began to come back. The golden pillars of the corridor came into view, and he was once again hunched over on the floor, a hand pressed to his chest, his bones dissolving into dust. He shut his eyes, willing it to just be over.

And then there was something on his cheek - something warm and soft. He looked up, and found himself looking into the eyes of what he could only identify as a human. She was kneeling in front of him, cupping his face in one hand and pressing the other over his, to his chest.

When she spoke, it was a whisper, but at the same time sounded as though the voice came from all around him.

"My darling Comic Sans," she said, looking him over. "Did you really think I'd let you go so easily?"

She knelt closer, pulling him into a hug, her arms wrapped under his and around his back. "Don't worry," she whispered again, "you don't have to leave just yet."

And as the words left her lips, he felt different. It felt as though water was flowing softly over his head and trickling down, cold and pleasant over his bones. And as he enjoyed the sensation, he realized he felt stronger. He realized his bones were not turning to dust - his HP was not dwindling. He was coming back.

At first, he panicked. He had seen, after all, what happened when monsters possessed determination, and that was just about the only thing that could bring him back, right?

But then, he noticed that he didn't feel weak, or as though he was just barely holding on. He felt stronger - stronger than he had ever felt before. His HP had continued to rise, surpassing one and climbing. Two, three, four, five. It was a strange sensation, but he could not deny that it felt great. He pulled back from the girl's embrace, standing and stepping around her. She was not his concern at the moment. Frisk - Chara - Frisk was. He called out to them, meandering around the pillars and cracks of darkness.

When he found them, he knew they were not the same. The malice had returned to their expression, color seeping into their eyes and cheeks. The world slowed, only for a second, and when it resumed, the child looked angry… beyond angry, even; they looked furious. They seemed to have abandoned all reason, and lunged at Sans empty-handed.

He felt his magic flare in both eyes. For a moment, he was startled, as he had never known what magic felt like in the right side of his face. But in the next moment, he grinned. It was a crooked, evil, power-hungry grin. He was not sure how he knew, but he was sure he could stop them now. He felt like his strength had increased tenfold, and tenfold again. It was a wonderful feeling, and he raised his hand to the child, a blue stop sign in their reign of terror.

"Now, now, kid. Let's be civilized here. We wouldn't want anyone to have a bad time, now would we?"

Had he been viewing the scene from an outside perspective, he might not have even recognized his voice. But from within him, the bitter cold tone felt just right, especially when it was tinged with a little bit of laziness and a little malice of his own.

And it wasn't just strength he felt. It was anger, and fear, and joy and everything. It was everything he had ever felt and it was extraordinary. The feelings were so vivid he imagined he could see them. He had never felt this way before. He had never felt this much before.

He was vaguely aware of his name being called, though he couldn't pinpoint who or even how many people were calling it. His vision would only focus on the child in front of him. And that child was in for one hell of a bad time. He could feel it clearly now - the pain, the suffering, the pure, unadulterated hatred that burned within him - everything they had done to him that he was powerless to stop. But he was no longer powerless. He sent everything he had at them, whittling away their HP as bruises and gashes formed on their pathetic body. He knew they were at their end. Karmic Retribution had given up, waiting for his verdict on their life.

But before he could kill them, they changed. It was a subtle change, but it made all the difference in the world. There was no hostility in their eyes; they curled in on themself, appearing smaller; and they begged for mercy.

"Mercy? You want mercy? Did you give them mercy?" he asked, sweeping a hand around the room. "Did they beg the same way you are now? Did you smile and continue on with your decimation, watching their pleading faces crumble into dust? Or did you kill them silently, before they even had a chance?"

"Sans… please…"

"Do you think you are above consequences? You - especially you - are not. So bear with me, kiddo . I'll make your last living moments...

"a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e h-e-l-l"

The child's only response was to shut their eyes tightly, contorting their face into one Sans had seen only once before. Predictably, they began muttering again. "Reset, reset, reset, reset…"

And the world slowed. He stayed where he was, glaring at the child, as he waited for time to resume.

And it didn't. At least, not for a while. They stayed locked in a standoff for what felt like forever, but, eventually, the world returned, and the first noise he heard was a shrill cry.

He whipped around, met with the girl on her knees, reaching out in front of her. Hovering just out of her reach, teasing her fingertips with its proximity, was a small, brown heart - her soul. He tilted his head slightly, curiosity breaking through as he studied the soul. It was covered in cracks, each one as dark as the blackness that invaded the corridor; the cracks left very little surface uninterrupted, and he wondered how he had even identified it as brown in the first place. From any greater of a distance, it surely would have seemed pitch black. As he stared at it, he felt calmer, somehow. As though the soul was absorbing the rage that emanated from his.

Her voice broke the current silence, echoing off the walls. "Frisk, no! You can't reset, please! It's too dangerous!"

It appeared that the child did not listen. The world slowed once more, and when it resumed its normal pace, he could do nothing but watch as the soul shattered, sending everyone flying to the floor, and its shards in every direction.

The darkness from the cracks spread across the air, connecting to the patches of darkness everywhere else. The web sprawled across the room, seeming to swell with every passing second, growing greater and greater until there was nothing left.

And then a void of nothing gave way to a whole lot of… something.

They were back in the corridor, but they were certainly not alone. A form had taken shape in the center of the room, tall and looming. Threads of darkness flowed from it like a cape, and thin, skeletal hands cupped a broken soul, holding its pieces together amidst darkness. An unnervingly smooth face peered down at it, its milky white color marred by jagged cracks in the surface. Though no movement came across the face, a quiet voice rang through the silence.

"Interesting… very interesting. Thank you."

The figure released the soul, and it floated through the air, trembling and flaking apart again. Though Sans was not sure why he so strongly felt responsible for the soul, he reached out in a moment of desperation, surrounding it in a blue aura. The fragments turned blue, and spread further apart. Sans knew he should be focusing on the newcomer, but could not help pulling the soul closer to him, encasing it in his protection.

And then it happened. As the soul drew near his ribs, it began to shake. Before he could stop it, the soul fragments made a beeline for him, and were absorbed by his soul. He blinked, shocked, and when his eyes opened, he could no longer see the corridor. He knew it was there - knew his feet were grounded to the floor in fear - but he could not see it, for thousands - millions, even - of images flashed in front of him. He couldn't see straight, and could barely make out anything amongst the overlaid movement. No matter where he looked, it was the same dizzying scenes, too fast and great in numbers for him to make sense of anything. He could feel his chest growing tight, his head throbbing with pain, and his limbs going numb. In a panic, he funneled all of his being and focus into getting rid of it, and ripped the soul from his, pushing it out into the air.

The soul drifted, no longer broken apart but not quite fixed, until Sans used his magic to guide it back to where the girl's body lay still. He didn't know if she could even come back, but the soul needed a home somewhere, he decided.

Satisfied with his actions, he turned back to the newcomer, surprised they had waited this long to make a move. Instead of a figure waiting patiently, or gearing up to attack them, he found Frisk still on the floor, cowering under the close gaze of the white face. It was speaking again, quietly, and seemed to be speaking more to itself than anyone in the room.

"Curious… a being with the ability to bend time to its will. It would appear that the time magic in the barrier had its use, after all. Oh, I should enjoy studying this one. Now, with such an excess of power in its soul, it shouldn't mind my borrowing some."

One of its slender hands reached toward the child, and they shied away, seemingly trying to melt into the wall. The crackle of magic filled the air, and their shining red soul materialized in front of them. They reached out, as if to take it back, but their hand slipped right through it.

Before now, Sans had never really stopped to think about how young they were. Oh for fuck's sake- the kid is nine years old! Who does this thing think it is to take advantage of them like this? As he thought, he tried to ignore his hypocriticism and focus on the scene in front of him. He had a few ways he could play this. 1. He could hop over to the kid and get them both out of here, but he would be leaving behind an angry mystery and a vulnerable one. 2. He could attack the figure - it probably had a soul, right? But then he would be toying with a force he had no knowledge of, and his strength from earlier wasn't exactly present for use now. 3. He could-

He could take too long to decide, apparently. Whatever the figure was doing to the soul, it wasn't good, at least not for Frisk. The soul's usually vibrant red was dulling and greying, and as Sans watched, their instincts seemed to kick in.

They clawed at the figure, but their slashing fingers slipped right through it. Sans stayed rooted to the spot, watching the child's feeble attempts grow weaker as their soul dimmed, translucence pressing in from the edges. He knew he should feel something, whether it be fear for the child or retribution for the things they had done, but he felt nothing. He felt an emptiness in his head, as though searching for something that wasn't there. He had, of course, grown used to this feeling a long time ago, but for some reason it now felt wrong. Perhaps he felt that if the world as he knew it was collapsing around him, could the walls in his memories not do the same?

The figure looked familiar. That was all he could say about it. How something so foreign and terrifying could be familiar to him… well, he didn't know, and for once, he wasn't sure he wanted to. He didn't particularly want to be associated with whatever beast was ripping the child's life force straight from their soul, but, then again, perhaps knowing who - or what - the figure was would be the key to fixing things. After all, it was the thing that had broken the world apart, so maybe it could put it back together.

He was ready to speak - had finally found his voice - when the figure straightened up, leaving Frisk in a trembling heap on the floor. It was surrounded by a pulsing red glow, as though Frisk's soul was reaching out to him. The red glow seemed to dissolve into the darkness that formed the edges of the creature, and the figure began to ripple and change. Darkness bound to darkness and pressed inward, wrapping itself over a form that Sans could not make out. When it settled, all that stood in front of him was a slender figure, as white as his own bones and taller than Papyrus, though perhaps not Undyne. It seemed to have shifted its focus to him, and was… blinking? He wasn't entirely sure what was happening on its face, as the whole thing seemed melted and dripping. The more he looked at the figure, the greater the sense of familiarity grew inside him, but it wasn't until he shifted his gaze downward that he understood.

"His hands - how do they move with those holes in them?"

Sans jerked his vision back up, locking eyes with the figure.

"Sans, Papyrus? It's me, Uncle Gaster. I'm here to take you to my house. Are you ready?"

"It's- it's okay, Sans. We'll be okay together. Your momma loved- loves you very much, but she has to… she has to go away. Do you want me to carry Papyrus? He's getting big already… No? You want to carry him? Okay…"

"This is my laboratory. I live in the loft, but I'm going to rent an apartment for the three of us. Your mother told me you like science, Sans, is that right? I can tell you all about my work, if you like, and maybe when you're older, you can help me in the lab."

"What do you want? I told you to go run the diagnostics. What about Papyrus? School? Yes, yes, of course. You know where the school is; you can get the forms, can't you?"

"Sans, I want you to help me with something. It's a very special experiment on amplifications to the natural magical energy of monsters… Dangerous? It's science, Sans. It's only as dangerous as we make it."

"Come on, get up. You're alright, aren't you? We haven't got the time to sit around and boondoggle - there's work to be done."

"Personal project? What are you hiding from me, Sans?"

"I gave you a task. This is your chance to redeem yourself. Go do it, or I will. Either way, they better end up dead on our lab counter."

"I don't care what you do with it, just get it out of here. It's useless, not unlike yourself these days."

The longer he stared into the figure's eyes, the worse the feeling in the pit of his soul felt. He did not know what to call it - maybe fear, or hatred, or something else entirely - so instead, he let his voice take the reins.

"Gaster?" He asked, his voice cracked and smaller than he had anticipated.

The figure simply nodded, and its expression shifted to something that might have been interpreted as guilt. But at the same time, it seemed to look hopeful.

A small whine broke into Sans' haze, and he remembered Frisk and their greying soul, and the girl whose soul Gaster had also touched earlier.

Sans had never been one for bravery or nobility, so one could imagine his surprise when he found himself pulling Frisk behind him, backing up so he stood protectively in front of the two humans, and spitting words as bitter as he ever had back in Gaster's direction.

"Stay away from them."