"Sans, slow down! I know you're upset, but you just don't understand yet. When you hear the whole story, you'll get it, okay? There are some things you haven't remembered, and they're really crucial to the story!"

"Maybe I'd remember more if everything wasn't such 'a long story'. You've got until we reach the lab, so start talking, kid."

Her flinch was practically audible. The shuffle of feet tripping over a nonexistent obstacle and the hitch of breath from behind him told him all he needed to know. But he didn't look back or slow down. He didn't owe anyone anything. He had spent his whole life owing people things and taking blame for everything under the cavern ceilings. It was his turn to be owed, and he was owed an explanation.

It didn't occur to him, that, by demanding an explanation, he was fulfilling his own debt of owing Nima the chance to explain. But, by that logic, they both owed each other a lot of things, and Sans was really quite terrible at keeping track of debts.

"Okay, okay - I don't know where to start, though."

"I've already said: start at why you tried to kill Gaster."

"I know that, Sans! God, just stop for a second!" Her last word was punctuated by a rough hand on his arm, yanking him to a stop and spinning him around. The rest of their little party, a good distance behind them, sped up at the sight of the commotion.

"Get off," Sans said, shaking his arm free of her grasp.

"Please, Sans, I can't do it like this. Angry is not the right mood to go into this with!"

"I can go into it with whatever mood I want. You are not the boss of me. No one is."

"Yes, yes, you're right, and I know that, but that doesn't mean you can't listen to others. I'm not ordering you, okay? I'm asking you to calm down and be patient with me."

"I've doled out enough patience for a lifetime - or several, to be more accurate - so if that is you asking, this is me refusing." He turned away once more, taking a few steps ahead, faltering only when he didn't hear the frantic slapping of bare feet behind him. "This is usually the part where you chase after me and get annoyed again," he commented lazily, half-turning around.

To his surprise, her hardened exterior seemed to have cracked again. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, and, despite her best efforts, her stern look was marred by a trembling lip.

"Why are you being so terrible?" Her voice came out higher, quieter, and in a tone all too reminiscent of a memory.

"Why are you so terrible to me?"

"I am not terrible," he said slowly. "I have forgotten and forgiven and been patient over and over again - times that are nearly countless except for my records of the kid's resets. Those are the only numbers I can put to a situation like this, and they are the terrible thing. I am as nice and compassionate as they come in situations like this."

" How many times have you dared to defy me, and how many times have I given you grace? The numbers do not lie, Sans; I am as forgiving as they come."

Sans hated the parallel. He couldn't be turning into Gaster; he was better than that. He had compassion and patience and… he had compassion and patience, he realized. but he didn't necessarily have them now.

"You call everyone else children. You blame others for your problems. You mope and swing your moods left and right instead of trying to solve the problem. And you look at me like I'm your enemy. Sans, you are being the very definition of terrible, in my book." The tremble in her voice was growing, and she looked briefly over her shoulder to see how far away the rest of the group was.

"How else do you expect me to see you? What am I supposed to see you as if I don't know who you are?"

"What am I to you, Sans?"

"What do you-"

"What would you call me? If someone asked, 'Who is that?' what would you say?"

"You're just Nima. That's all I know about you. What, do you seriously want to be called the Timekeeper?"

"I'm not talking about names, Sans! What about friendship? Do you really not remember any of it? All my effort - was that for nothing?"

"I don't know what you want from me!" He was yelling again. It was still a strange feeling, but perhaps stranger was the knowledge that it was growing more familiar by the minute. It seemed the two of them couldn't have a single conversation without someone raising their voice.

"I just-"

"What do you expect from me?" he interrupted. "What do you expect me to do? Become all buddy-buddy with the person who killed my Uncle? My only connection to my family outside of Papyrus, was erased from my world, my mind, my very existence because of you!"

"The you that I knew would have wanted that," she replied, her quiet murmur a stark contrast to his own yells.

"That's not me, then, is it? Whatever you were to me - to that me - I don't know that now. The me you see when you look at me is not the me that I am. My last memory of you is when I was fourteen. You've been out of my life for longer than you were in it. What do you expect to come from that?"

"Fifteen years…" she whispered. "I was with you for fifteen years. Even if you didn't realize it, I was with you, even after I wasn't there, physically. What do you think kept me grounded and conscious in that void? I existed outside the timelines, watching them scroll by like reels of film, every one becoming intertwined with my very soul. But I focused on you. I watched you grow from that very first day without Gaster - the first new timeline in over a thousand years. I saw everything, Sans: everything you went through, and everything you did. I saw all the times you tried and failed and sobbed and lost yourself, and I saw all the times you were so close and happiness was just within reach before it was ripped away by the end of the timeline.

"I know who you are, Sans. I know the current you as much as anyone, and this isn't it."

"Did you really?"

"Huh?"

"Did you really exist outside of time? You never answered me, when I asked earlier. And don't say it's a long story. I think we've established that we've got all the time in the universe - literally."

"Yes, I did. I mean, you can't exist completely out of time, or consciousness can't exist, right?"

"Yeah, seems reasonable."

"But I existed as far out on the edge of time as I could. I existed in time itself, not a neat little package like a timeline. I mean, that's all I can really tell you… I don't know how it works, only that I was there and there were things I could do."

"Things?"

"If I tried - and I mean really tried - I could interact with the timelines, at least a little bit. I could pick images from one timeline and drop them into another, so long as there was a vessel for them."

"Alright, you lost me."

"I handpicked your memories. Whenever they reset and created a new timeline, I realized you didn't remember everything - or, in some cases, anything - so I pulled images and events from your other selves and shared them with you. You know, you have an extraordinary connection to the void, Sans. Sorry, 'the void' is what I call the place I was in. But your mind was so open to my influence. Everyone else was very closed off and hard to reach - except for maybe Asgore," she gestured to the recently arrived group, "Frisk, and I think Alphys, too."

"What about me?" The shrill voice belonged to the flower, and both Sans and Nima jumped, seeming to have forgotten that it could speak.

"No, you're a stubborn little shit," she said blankly.

"Well, f-"

"That's enough of that, children," Asgore interrupted as Frisk covered the flower's mouth. "Please, continue your story, but perhaps as we walk? We still have a long way to go to get to the lab."

The group set off, this time Sans and Nima lagging behind, and she resumed her explanation. "So, I was dropping memories in as much as I could in the beginning, but then I noticed that it was having a sort of… negative effect on those of you that got the memories."

"Going for understatement of the century, are ya?"

"Okay, a very negative effect. Happy? I thought I should stop because it was hurting you guys, but then, while Alphys and Asgore funneled their fleeting memories into research and the back of their mind, respectively, you let it consume you. You were torturing yourself over things you couldn't remember… so I thought it best to just keep giving them to you.

"But then there was this one reset that wasn't even quite complete. It started weaving a new timeline to branch off that one old spot, but before it could attach, the timelines all sort of… I don't know… shifted? And it attached in the wrong place. Everything was half reset and memories were gone, some of the dead stayed dead and some came back, and I couldn't reach it. The whole timeline was like… closed off. And it hurt-"

"How could it hurt? Could you really feel things in that void place?"

"It hurt my soul. You saw it, with Gaster: my soul started cracking. The resets before that… those weren't that bad. They were just a sort of twinge - a minor annoyance. But this reset defied the laws of time, and even if it was just for a moment, it was all it needed. These new resets, bound to this broken point in time, they messed up everything. In the beginning, I didn't understand how to get into them - I couldn't give you memories. And it got even weirder, too. The timelines didn't just branch off of that one point - everything that branched off there had thousands of its own branches. And all of those branches had thousands of their own branches. There was so much going on; I didn't even know where to start!

"And then there was the anomaly. It was this strange little hotspot of time magic that stood out like a beacon, drawing my attention to whatever timeline it was in. And it was only ever in one timeline. When a new timeline branched off, it was because the anomaly had jumped back to that point and gone off the track. The anomaly had full control over almost everything. There seemed to be set spots where it could jump around to, but it jumped around so often, I could barely keep track of it. It left behind timelines full of confused and broken monsters, deaths caused by something that didn't exist, and you, remembering the things that didn't exist.

"Frisk."

"Yeah. Frisk. I don't understand it - what makes them so powerful? What gave them such great control over time, and why did it cause so much trouble?"

"Determination."

"Hm?"

"It's called Determination. Alphys can explain it a little better, but basically it's the will to carry on - the will to change fate."

"The will to bend time," she said, a look of clarity falling across her face. "But why Frisk and the flower? Why them and not any of the other monsters down here?"

"A monster can't have Determination; It interferes with our magic - Determination is strictly human."

"But... the flower has it."

"I have a name, you know!"

The flower's protests were ignored by everyone.

"The flower has determination? I don't even… that shouldn't be possible. If it's a flower monster, it should have turned to dust by now."

"I don't know, Sans. I may be all-seeing, but that's different from all-knowing."

"You called yourself an 'all-knowing being with powers beyond compare', if I remember correctly," Sans pointed out.

He was met with an eye roll. "I might have been exaggerating a little… or a lot… That's now important now!"

"Alright, I'll get off your case. What did you mean, though, by the anomaly changing everything. Didn't the anomaly start the resets?"

"No! The anomaly started the resets that hurt and messed up time. The resets before that were done by the flower."

Sans' footsteps faltered, and the two stopped.

"Sans? Are you okay?"

There was something in the snow - something small and bright amidst a pile of dust and red cloth.

Something small and yellow and cackling.

Something now familiar.

Sans didn't reply, instead pushing roughly past Nima and bursting into the group ahead. He lunged for the flower, but Frisk pulled it away as Asgore restrained him.

"Sans, what are you doing?" Asgore grunted. Sans wasn't particularly strong or heavy, especially compared to the double-or-triple-the-size-of-him Asgore, but there was something to be said about the force one could exert when driven by rage.

"That thing killed my brother!"

The flower wrapped its roots around Frisk's shoulders, shifting to sit on their shoulder and freeing their hands.

Sans, I'm sorry. It was Chara - I thought you understood-

"Not you. That," he said, jerking his head at the flower.

"Hmm, guilty as charged, I suppose!"

Frisk turned to the flower, the horror expressed in their face greater than any other emotion he had seen grace their normally blank features.You did? They asked, their signs slow and trembling.

"Oh, use your words. Chara was never like this - you're just like them, except so much more difficult! "

Frisk didn't look fazed by the outburst. Sans, had he not been consumed by the rage of learning of the flower's deeds, might have wondered if they had heard such a remark many time before, but, alas, it would remain an unanswered question.

For a moment, all was silent; even Sans' shoes had stopped scraping against the concrete in their frantic attempt to break him free of Asgore's hold. He was still leaning forward, however, so his ultimate destination was the ground once Asgore's grip slackened and let him go.

No one paid attention to the fallen skeleton's groans.

"How do you know that name?" Asgore asked, his eyes now trained on the flower.

A pregnant pause hung silence between the two.

"As King of Monsters, I demand you answer me. How do you know that name?" Asgore's composure was quickly unraveling. His voice becoming wobbly and his expression growing frantic - or angry - or some horrific mixture of the two.

"It's me," the flower said, its voice slightly quieter than before, the angry edge nearly gone. There was another pause, wherein the flower's expression seemed to convey hoping for something. But, when its wishes went unanswered, it finished the statement. "Asriel."

The name caused Sans to nearly fall over in his state of halfway-up. That name had gone unspoken for decades, according to every monster he'd ever met. True to that fact, he had never heard it spoken aloud. His only knowledge of the fabled prince came from a written story detailing monster interaction with humans over the years.

But, this was a flower. How could a flower be the dead child of their king?

The flower must be lying. The flower couldn't possibly be a dead monster - monsters stay dead. A horrific thought struck him at this moment: should he tell Asgore that Toriel was dead? Of course, it would raise some questions as to how Sans knew Toriel, how he knew she was dead, and why he didn't protect her. But, then again, he was sure that, by now, him knowing things he wasn't supposed to know was just sort of a given.

But Asgore's grief-stricken face showed a belief different from Sans'. He truly believed this flower was his child, and he was dealing with more than enough resurfaced grief to deal with the knowledge of Toriel's death. So, Sans remained quiet, gratefully watching a scene in which, for once, he wasn't the one being shocked out of confusion and into silence.

"Oh quit gaping at me like that! Like you wouldn't try killing everyone if you came back as a flower! A flower! Do you know how impossible it is to do anything as a flower? All I can do is talk and kill - and I ran out of things to say! I tried everything - every insult, every compliment, every question - everything! I knew every response to anything I could ever say, and it got boring. So I had to change things up. It was experimental - oh, yes, just experimental - at first. But then i realized I never felt guilty. I never felt remorse for what I did… and it was glorious. It was freeing . I hadn't felt anything since I opened these beady little eyes but then I did feel something. I felt satisfaction. Killing could be anything I wanted it to be - slow and methodical, furious and quick, surprising and erratic - and I got to try it over and over again until the smiley trashbag caught up with me."

Heads swiveled to look at Sans, who merely shrugged. "Hey, first I'm hearing this, too," he said in defense.

"Oh, yes, of course you wouldn't remember. Of course you would forget me like all the rest. Of course you would block me from your mind to strip yourself of the guilt you should be feeling. You killed me! Over and over and over and over you beat me into the ground! I could never kill you, and it drove me insane. Why would you, of all monsters, be the one to stop me? If I could have just beaten you, I wouldn't have had to reset again. If I had beaten you, the kid wouldn't have been able to fall down here. All of this is your fault! All of it!"

Now, Sans had had plenty of blame in his life, and he had vowed never to do his best to never take it again. Luckily for him, there was really no way for him to take this blame, even if he wanted to. This flower was clearly off its rocker, and Sans almost felt kind of bad for it.

Almost.

"Okay, are we going to sit here and listen to a blithering flower, or are we going to go to Alphys' lab? There will be plenty of time to figure out this whole flower business, and maybe Alphys can experiment on it - shed some light on the situation, right?"

"Experiment?! How sadistic can you get? I am a living being! I have rights!" The flower's protests were, sadly, not ignored this time.

"He's right, Sans," Nima said from behind him. "We can't just use him against his will; we can't take control of him - that's what he did to others."

"We need to know what's going on, and experimenting may be the only way to find out. Science usually proves to be helpful and accurate."

"So, what? Are you just going to throw me under the bus, too? Are you going to have Alphys experiment on me? How about Frisk? Gaster? Are you just going to throw a bunch of free-willed subjects at her and strip them down to just subjects? I know you want to fix things, Sans, but that's just crazy!"

"We do what we have to," Sans said, eyeing Asgore. The king averted his eyes, guilt tinging their edges. "Don't we?"

"Those were different times, Sans."

"No, they weren't! There's no such thing as a different time! Either we always do what we have to to get by, or we never do; we don't get to pick and choose just because it's a hard decision - that's the whole idea! For surface's sake, am I the only one here with a clear head?"

"Sans-"

"We are going to the laboratory, and we are fixing this. Anyone who has an argument can take it up with no one and go off on their own. Rob a store, solve a puzzle, drown in the waterfall, fall in lava for all I care - just don't argue with the plan again."

"Sans, I think-"

"Don't. Argue."

"Sans, what is happening to you? You used to be so… happy. What changed?"

He turned slowly, meeting her eyes with the emptiness of his own. "What changed? My life turned into an experiment run by a flower and a kid. I watched my friends and family die , over and over and over. Don't ask me what changed. You already know more about it than I do."

"Okay, so your life kinda sucks - doesn't everyone's?"

"Don't compare my suffering to your petty problems."

"Okay, see, right now, I could pull the "trapped in a timeless void" card, but I'm not going to, because that's not the point. Your life sucks, yeah? Well, news flash: it sucked before, too. You weren't exactly happy with Gaster and your situation, but that didn't prevent you from being a decent and happy person! Just because your situation sucks doesn't mean you have to be a jerk! God, if you were like this when you were with Gaster, I probably would have just walked out and left myself to the mercy of the nearest monster, rather than stick around with you."

Sans faltered, pinpricks of pupils fading back into existence. Was he really being that… terrible? "Stop exaggerating. We all want to survive." She couldn't have meant it.

"I wouldn't want to survive if my existence was miserable - if the only person I could interact with treated me like dirt. If you…" she paused, taking a shaky breath and swallowing hard. "If I was just a burden to you. I wouldn't want to. Do you remember what I said about my soul? Don't you remember what I offered?"

He didn't. Or, perhaps he did. He couldn't really concentrate when there was a human on the brink of tears next to him, and the world ending - though he was fairly used to it by now - didn't help, either. "I don't think so…"

But as he spoke, his words became a lie. The memory flickered in the back of his mind, and suddenly he was back in the whirlwind of memories that had flown by when he had sat at Grillby's all that time ago. This time, though, he was in control, and he focused all his thought into navigating to the memory he wanted. And whether the collapse of the world was helping or if he was just really remembering more, he supposed he would never know, but, either way, the memory was clearer and more detailed than ever before.

"Do you want my soul?" She was crying - or, at least, she was trying to - her body was caved in on itself, her shoulders shaking and her eyes red, but no tears streaked tracks down her cheeks. And, despite her efforts to sit straight and look tall, she just looked so small and weak. Her eyes were so dark - such a stark contrast from the first time he had seen her; her skin seemed to cling to her bones; her expression was no longer sad or worried or happy or fascinated - just… tired.

"Do I - what?" He hadn't been expecting such a question. Did she not understand what she was offering? Souls were such a huge thing for monsters - it was easy for him to forget that humans knew next to nothing about them. He glanced at the brown heart floating in front of her - it was shining and healthy, strong and gleaming, and the juxtaposition of such a soul made her physical appearance even more saddening. He wanted to ask if she was okay, but he already knew the answer. She would say she was fine, he would ask again, and she would tell him to stop worrying. It was a futile effort, though; at this point, all he could do was worry when he looked at her.

"You said you needed souls to break the barrier. Do you want mine?" She was persistent; he'd give her that. Her expression was strange, though, almost as though it wasn't quite what he was expecting. There was something, however small, hidden behind the gaunt mask of fatigue. It almost looked sad, or pitying.

What could she be pitying him for? What made her so sad and… frightened? Was she scared of him? Sans couldn't remember what had happened before the conversation - that was the pitfall of almost all his memories: context was not optional, but his mind sure thought it was.

"What you're offering - I can't take that. That's death. I can't do that to you."

She relaxed a little at this, the fear dissipating slightly.

"Why not? Wouldn't it help so many monsters?" Her voice was still wary, as though she was testing his response carefully, possibly to confirm or deny what fear still lingered.

"I promised you I'd keep you safe. I intend to keep that promise."

"Why would you offer that?" He said, coming back to the present and meeting her eyes again.

"So you do remember?"

"Why would you offer your life up? The whole point of hiding you was to keep you alive."

"Sans, do you remember what I looked like? When that conversation took place?"

He didn't speak, instead trying his best not to remember the gaunt, hollowed cheeks and tired, dull, eyes - well, shit, there it is. He must have flinched, or otherwise given clue to his mental activity, because she continued.

"Yeah, that. I remember that. I couldn't even cry. I kept sobbing and shaking and I had to hold a pillow to my face just to muffle the sound, but I still couldn't cry. I offered you my life because I was already dying, Sans. Humans, we don't work like monsters do. We can't just live off magic - we need water and vitamins and nutrients and I couldn't get those down here. You could barely bring me water three times a week because Gaster didn't want you spilling in the lab - you snuck me out back to Waterfall once and I practically swam through the garbage dump - I drank the garbage dump's water because I was so freaking thirsty and anything was better than nothing. And then I got sick because of it and I kept apologizing and you were freaking out because you didn't know what to do and thought it was weird, and I kept telling you it was my fault and that I could just hide if you needed to go back to the lab, but you insisted because you were worried about me, and the first time you heard my stomach growl you jumped out of your chair because it scared you, and you didn't know what to do when I bled and-"

"Hey, hey, stop - stop it."

"You don't know how humans work, Sans. You didn't know and I'm almost positive you still don't know! My point… my point is that I wasn't meant to survive for extended periods of time down here. No human was. That's why I offered my soul - I wanted you to know it was okay to take it if I died."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"How do you know I didn't?"
"I'm not joking around. If you'd told me, I could have - I don't know - worked faster, maybe? I could have tried harder to find a way to get you out. I could have-"

"Sans, what did I tell you?"

"You've told me a lot of things."

"What did I say before I started telling you about how I got here?"

"I don't know - something about it being a long story, probably."

"Really, Sans? C'mon, you can't complain about not remembering things if you aren't even going to try to remember things that happened twenty minutes ago."

"Can't you just tell me?"

"Sans! Oh, fine, whatever. I told you that you'll want to blame yourself for things, and that you shouldn't because you aren't to blame - I don't blame you, Sans. Why do you have to blame yourself?"

"Because I could have done something. All this time, I could have done something . I could have stopped the kid, I could have-"

"But you couldn't have. That's the point, Sans! You have done those things, and they didn't work! Okay? Get over yourself - you aren't responsible for saving the world!"

"Who else is going to do it?" he snapped. The tension between them seemed to stretch taut, and he noticed that she, too, was getting better at this. She didn't appear to be on the brink of tears this time, so he figured that was an improvement… sort of. Was it really an improvement if they were getting used to arguing? It certainly made things easier and less emotional, but was that really a good thing? Shouldn't they be trying to not argue at all? Sans wasn't sure anymore. It felt like it had been forever since he last had a functional relationship with anyone - truth be told, maybe it had. He wouldn't have called his relationship with Papyrus dysfunctional, but it certainly wasn't the most functional of things; all this time, there had always seemed to be a communication gap between them.

And his relationship with Gaster? Well, he wasn't sure he wanted to put a name to it. For all that he could remember, Gaster hadn't treated him like a son, but he hadn't treated him like an employee, either. It was almost like he was part of the experiment - like he was nothing to Gaster but a subject.

And, maybe, he was. Everything he had seen - and everything Nima had said - seemed to point to Gaster using him and making his life generally suck. And there was that one memory that really bugged Sans. He'd only caught a glimpse of it, but it was painful and exhausting and he hadn't wanted to feel it again. Gaster was there, but he wasn't doing anything. Was Gaster the cause of such suffering?

He didn't particularly want to think about it, and, luckily, he didn't have to, for Nima spoke again, this time quieter and calmer. Well, he thought, at least one of us knows how to end arguments.

"We are, Sans. We are all going to save the world, and we're going to do it together. Because you don't know how to save the world, and I don't know how to save the world, and I'd bet anything that Alphys and Asgore and Frisk - none of them know how to save the world. But, maybe, if we actually help each other instead of arguing and being drama queens, we'll figure it out, yeah?"

As much as he wanted to win their argument, Sans had to admit that she had a pretty good point.