Do it!

She raised the knife over her head.

Do it!

Blood pounded through her chest, roared in her ears. Sans had beaten her, killed her, tortured her, mocked her, threatened her, and given her over to despair. By all rights, she should hate him for what he had done. By all rights, she did hate him. He and the rest of Underfell were the reason she had nightmares every night. They were the reason her soul was worn and on the verge of breaking.

They deserved to suffer for what they'd done.

They were the reason touch terrified her; the reason everything terrified her. They were the reason she would never be able to function like normally. Sans and the others had systematically destroyed every part of her. For all the pain they'd put her through, they deserved to suffer. Repeatedly. Painfully. They deserved to repay her every broken bone, every drop of blood, every glistening tear, every night-stifled sob.

They deserved to die for what they'd done.

Frisk gripped the knife tighter, the steel icy in her hands. She imagined the blow. She'd drive it straight through his rib-cage, straight through his soul. She'd cup his shattered soul in her hands and watch it fall to pieces and scatter in the wind. She'd sprinkle his dust, bury it under the snow, thus taking one final right from him - the monsters's tradition of scattering the dust over the monster's favored object. Even that would be a mercy compared to how he'd killed her.

Sans deserved Hell for what he'd done.

Do it!

She exhaled in a rush. The knife flashed downwards.

It stopped an inch away from his soul.

The knife clattered into the snow next to Sans; Frisk sank down beside it, shaking hand covering her face. Inside her mind were voices screaming at her for her foolishness and a voice murmuring praise. She shut them out as best she could, fighting back tears.

What had she done?

"I'm so sorry, Gran," she murmured, voice not even a breath. "I'm so sorry."

She'd gone five months without breaking, five months without even thinking about it. Why was it only now that she'd weakened?

"Why didn'tcha do it, kiddo?"

Sans.

Frisk threw herself backwards in shock. With wide eyes, she watched as Sans sat up and picked up the knife. He ran one long finger along its length and examined it for a moment. When he was done, he turned a cold, calculating gaze to her.

"Well?"

"I..." Frisk crawled backwards a little farther. Had he been awake this entire time? If he had, then why...why hadn't he stopped her before she'd nearly killed him? "I made a promise."

Sans tilted his head. Some of the ice melted from his stare. "You've never mentioned a promise before."

Frisk sighed heavily, her breath a puff of frost in the air. "I never had the chance to hurt anybody before, let alone kill them. This was the first time I..."

"But you didn't." Sans hefted the knife; for a petrifying moment she thought he was going to throw it at her. "It's a good blade. Where'd you get it?"

"Just...found it. In the snow." Frisk gestured vaguely. She could feel nervous perspiration sliding down her face despite the freezing temperature. She rubbed her bare hands together in a futile attempt to warm them.

Sans hummed as he examined it once more. Then he looked back up at Frisk. "To be honest, kid, I think I might've-"

CRASH!

Frisk stiffened, scrambling to her feet. Later, she'd wonder what Sans had been about to say. Now she only felt dread pool into her stomach. There was only one monster who could walk thatloudly.

"SANS! WHERE'S THE HUMAN?"

Sans scowled, pushing himself to his feet as well. "Wasn't expectin' Undyne to show up so soon," he commented with sarcastic glance at the ceiling.

Obviously monsters had no sun or moon to tell time with, but the glowing lights attached to the ceiling had been tuned by magic to act like the surface's lights. As Frisk looked up as well, she realized it was past noon. Exactly how long had she been out for?

"SANS! I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE, PUNK!"

The skeleton turned to Frisk. For a moment, his gaze softened into something she'd never seen from him before: regret. Before she could comment on it, it was gone, leaving Sans's eyes cold once more.

"You know our deal."

Frisk nodded. Despair welled up deep inside her, mixed with anger and hatred that had never gone away and fresh guilt from nearly breaking her promise. For the briefest of moments she'd let herself imagine what her life could be like without monsters. She'd stolen that hope away herself, but it didn't hurt any less because of that. If anything, the self-denial only hurt worse.

"Don't worry, kiddo," Sans said quietly. "I'll tell her to make it painless. Promise."

While she was still wondering over his use of the unfamiliar nickname, Sans took a deep breath. Then he bellowed, "OVER HERE, UNDYNE. I'VE GOT THE HUMAN."

The response and the successive sprint in their direction were something Frisk vaguely registered but didn't pay much attention to. In her mind, she was calling up her SAVE files, searching for the one she was about to use. No matter what Sans said about killing her, no matter what happened to her after this reset, it couldn't be worse than eternity without a soul.

"HUMAN!" Undyne thundered, so unexpectedly that Frisk jumped and turned around to see the monster a foot away. "YOU HAVE- Sans, why isn't she bound? Didn't you capture her?"

Sans glanced at Frisk, whose eyes were glued to Undyne. "Nah, she gave up of her own free will. Told me she was willin' to die 's long we made it painless."

Undyne, like Toriel, Sans, and Papyrus, looked different. Her armor was less spiky, gray instead of black; her hair was cut shorter; and instead of her customary two spears, she was completely unarmed. Even her armor was different without the usual broken soul imprint. Except for her razor-sharp teeth and the scowl affixed to her face, she couldn't have looked less like the Undying Demon Frisk knew her as.

Confusion flashed across Undyne's expression. "Uh, okay then. Human. You know what comes next, don't you?"

Frisk nodded stiffly. In her mind, she grabbed onto the SAVE file she needed.

A glowing spear appeared in Undyne's hands, blue instead of red. She pointed it towards Frisk's chest. "Let's get this over with."

As a tugging sensation in her chest told her that her soul was coming out, Frisk closed her eyes. She selected the SAVE file and summoned every ounce of determination she had. She braced herself for the agonizing pain resetting gave her. Then, as she heard Undyne's spear fly towards her, she RESET.

Nothing happened.

Frisk hesitated. Had she not tried to RESET hard enough? Or had her soul drained of so much determination she wasn't able to do it anymore? She opened her eyes to see what was going on.

As though a switch had been flipped, sounds and sensations roared back into her. She again felt the biting cold, again felt the strange emptiness in her chest that came with being without a soul. She was still alive, it seemed. Why?

Frisk looked up at Undyne in confusion and found something she'd never thought she'd find. Undyne looked...sad. But not just sad; no, she looked distraught and scared and pained. As though whatever she was seeing at that moment was so terrible it wrenched her soul.

Frisk followed her gaze.

"Your soul, human. What happened to it?"

Even Frisk couldn't stop her face from showing its shock when she looked. It was, quite honestly, a mess. Gone was the vibrant red soul she'd once had that had pumped fiercely with determination. Now its edges were translucent and dull, completely drained of life and slowly deteriorating further. The bright glow of a healthy soul had been replaced with a faint, lackluster glint that absorbed the light around it. The worst part, however, was the large crack running down the middle of it.

Frisk pursed her lips. She knew exactly when that had happened. She'd felt the snap inside her right before she'd lost her tether to reality.

She was drawn back from her thoughts when Undyne's spear disappeared and the monster herself took a step back from Frisk. "Human...the pain your soul has seen...I would not add to it."

"What?" the word flew from her mouth before she could stop it.

"And anyway," Undyne quickly regained her usual blustering tone, "it's completely useless! We need healthy souls, not souls on the verge of breaking. Your soul doesn't have enough strength in it to move one particle of the Barrier, let alone break a seventh of it!"

Frisk flinched, partially from Undyne's volume and partially from her words.

"So," Sans's voice piped up, "whaddya wanna do with her, then? No point in killin' her if we're not gonna take her soul."

Undyne huffed. "I don't care what she does. Just don't let her get in my way, or I might change my mind."

Overwhelmed by numbness, Frisk said nothing. She couldn't tear her eyes off the horrendous spectacle that was her soul.

Suddenly, it disappeared from sight. Frisk glanced wildly around between Sans and Undyne as the emptiness faded from her chest, telling her that her soul was back inside. She caught Sans's eye. He was looking at her with a sympathy she wouldn't have thought possible even a minute before. Thrown, Frisk looked away. Had seeing her soul been that disturbing for him?

"Hey kid, wanna stay with me and Paps? Can't promise ya much, but we'll give ya food. Uh, I can get ya some Grillby's if you're tired of spaghetti."

Frisk couldn't think of a place she wanted to stay less. But at the same time, what choice did she have? If Sans wanted her to stay with them, he'd make her. Besides, who knew? Maybe staying with the brothers would lessen her chance of running into other hostile monsters.

"I'd suggest you accept, punk," Undyne put in. "The monsters in Snowdin aren't a very aggressive bunch, but go anywhere else in the Underground and that changes. Lots of us, well..."

"Want my soul to break the barrier," Frisk finished tonelessly.

"...yeah." Undyne exchanged an awkward glance with Sans.

Frisk remembered then that dream she'd once had of finding a mountain in Snowdin and making her home there. In light of Sans's offer, she couldn't help but long for her solitary mountain more than ever - even despite the impracticalities of life with little to no necessities and a huge risk of death. Not that that would be a new occurrence, of course.

She sighed heavily. "Fine. But I'm not sleeping on the floor. You can at least put me on the couch."

"Ugh, fine."

Later, she would wonder what had brought about this sudden change of heart in Sans. Perhaps, she would ponder, it was a desire to keep an eye on her; perhaps it was for the same reason Papyrus was acting so nice. Perhaps some twisted form of sympathy had finally wrenched its way into his skull. But that was later, and this was now. In this moment, she registered only a dull sense of defeat.

"Oh! And that reminds me, you mediocre bone-bag comedian! Why the hell did you let Papyrus keep the human in your house for three days!?"

Sans's grin changed a bit. Frisk thought it might have become a grimace. "Do we have to talk about this right now?"

"Hell yeah we do! You're not usually that stupid, Sans! Has your empty skull finally caught up to you?"

"I admit that was a brainless thing for me to do..."

"UGH! SANS!"

"But I had my reasons."

There was a moment of quiet.

"...and would you care to share those reasons?"

Sans shrugged. "Nah."

"ARGH!"

Frisk reflexively jumped backwards a few feet away from Undyne.

"Sorry, Undyne," Sans said completely unapologetically. "I know something about this seems fishy to you-"

"SHUT UP!"

"But you know how Papyrus gets when he's reel-y into something-"

"FORGET I SAID ANYTHING! JUST SHUT UP!"

"And since I don't really want to debait you right now, I'll leaf you alone now."

"SANS I'M WARNING YOU!"

"...that last one wasn't even a fish pun."

Sans and Undyne slowly turned back to her as though remembering she was still there.

Frisk backed up a little bit. "J-just saying."

Undyne let out a loud, cackling laugh. "Look at what we got here! A human who stands up to monsters, nice! You normally like this, or what?"

"Uh..." Somehow, telling Undyne that Frisk's normal state was one of unfathomable terror didn't seem appropriate. "Not really."

Another new instance this reset had been Sans's alarming amount of jokes. Terrible jokes. He'd complain about putting too much backbone into work that day. He'd wave various utensils around electrical circuits and announce the shocking turn of events about to happen. He'd glance up at the clock and wax poetic about how much he wished he could eat it, if it weren't so time consuming. The amount of bad jokes Sans had made in previous resets weren't even half of what he'd already made in this one.

The strangest thing? Previous Sanses had always been varying levels of embarrassed whenever they were caught making a pun. This Sans not only made puns, but enjoyed people's adverse reactions to them. Papyrus and Undyne had both yelled at him for making said puns, but never once had he stopped.

To be honest, it was time like those she wondered if he were even the same monster as from previous resets.

Back in the present, Undyne gave a disappointed huff. "That's too bad. You keep that up, I might even offer to train you so you look less like a limp noodle."

"I, uh-"

"Welp, I think we'd best get going," Sans interrupted smoothly. "Paps'll be beside himself if we don't get back soon."

Undyne threw Sans a sour look for the interruption. "You sure you can take care of the human?"

It was hard to tell, but Frisk thought Sans might've bristled. When he spoke, however, his tone was so casual she decided she must've been seeing things. "'Course. Whaddya take me for, some sorta slacker?"

"That's exactly what I-"

"Woulda you look at the time!" Sans interrupted. "Looks like we gotta go."

He appeared by Frisk's side and latched onto one arm. Before she could react, they were sucked into the void.