"Goat Mom?" Toriel echoed. Her large eyes blinked hard in faux outrage.

Sans snickered.

"I will have you know that I am of the highest pedigree …"

"of goats?" Sans finished. "'s okay, tori; no one's sayin' you ain't got papers."

"… of boss monsters, descended from royalty predating the rise of humankind."

"'kay."

Toriel's face scrunched. Sans grinned like a Cheshire cat.

"boss momster." He snapped his fingers under the twinkling stars of his eyes. "better?"

She beamed like the sun, and he basked.

The air in this chamber swayed with slow breezes, even though the door had been shut behind you. Sans, having only caught a passing glimpse of this place when young, found the architecture eerie but charming with its ivy covered walls and overgrown grass patches. Something soothed him about nature taking its course, as if the Ruins were slowly falling away to inevitable samsara at his feet.

"Would you rather not stay awhile?" Toriel asked, noting the dark circles around his eye sockets. "Rest. Spend the night, perhaps… . You seem so tired. It would be best not to push yourself."

A guilty smile showed on Sans' face, but he batted away the suggestion like a cloud of smoke. "heh, i always look a little undead, no need to worry. plus we really oughta make up for lost time. more than a few steps to new home, if i'm countin'."

"You really are taking them to Asgore, then."

Sans picked nervously at the seams in his pockets. Did she have to say it like that?

"i won't let anythin' bad happen to 'em," he said. "made ya a promise, remember?"

At that, her gaze sank deep into the marrow of his bones.

"but they're gonna need help," he said. "kid can't make it if they face him alone, 'specially not now. they're gonna need their friends, their family. it'd mean a lot for you to be there."

"I have not left the Ruins since …"

"just let it simmer."

The room echoed as Sans took lethargic steps toward the door. Toriel followed him quietly enough to be standing on air, and yet he could feel her behind him. The radiance of her soul burned like an oven he could warm his hands beside for hours.

"was good to finally see you, door lady."

"Sans, wait." She lifted the claws of her fingers to her lips apprehensively. "How are you … really?"

His smile almost dissolved.

"walkin' on sunshine."

"No, you are not."

The storm he had struggled to suppress now swirled to life across his face.

"And I cannot help but wonder if I am partly to blame," she said, tears building in the corners of her eyes. "That promise. If I had not asked you to make it, perhaps you would not have … "

"no, no, no, tori, please."

When her muzzle sank behind her hands, Sans felt his heart sink in suit. Her frame of mind had completely escaped him until then. At this point in her life, she had suffered enough to trap herself forever behind frozen purple doors. After everyone she had grieved, after how lonely she had become, his death would have been yet another stone too heavy around her neck.

"i'm sorry," he murmured, hands tightening to fists inside his pockets. "i was selfish, so fuckin' selfish. please, don't think like that. you didn't do nothin' wrong."

He only realized he had lost sense of reality when the soft, wet pads of her hands framed his face. Her voice felt distant, but as it called him back, the smothering feeling in his chest weakened.

"You are the one who did nothing wrong," she said. Her cheeks glittered with salt water. "It is not your fault, and it was not selfish."

Her words sewed through his soul, tightening his pieces together even if it stung.

"So, my sweet skeleton … please, tell me."

As the door boomed shut behind him, Sans buttoned his jacket for the calming effect alone. He exhaled an ice dragon's breath like a cloud of crystals. To him, "cold" was a sensation like any other. It did not cause him discomfort unless well beyond the natural spectrum.

He looked left and then right. No Frisk. Worry dwarfed all else when he realized something had wiped the snow clean.

"kiddo?" he called. Anxiety crept into his voice. "frisk?"

His phone buzzed in his pocket and his left hand plunged after it. While he had rigged the scanner to alert him near significant time anomalies, that wasn't it.

It was a text from Alphys.

His soul launched into his skull. He and the dinosaur monster hadn't communicated through anything but Undernet in years. He hastily opened the message.

"go right."

Your senses crumbled.

The white forest had darkened into oblivion. Sounds dulled in underwater static, save the high-pitch ring overtaking your throbbing ears. Just as your world began slipping away, you dropped like a stone. You thought you had finally given in when your descent slowed to that of a feather, but then the cold, sobering touch of snow cradled you. You gasped. Oxygen had never tasted so pure.

Your vision cleared to reveal the soles of Sans' shoes, planted firmly, protectively in front of you. Above his shoulders floated a giant and terrifying image—a dog skull, or perhaps a dragon skull—seething with angry, bright blue magic. The same energy wisped from Sans' left eye, the one you had known to flash with fury.

The way Flowey cowered in the distance, you realized all at once that they were preparing to fight. You took hold of Sans' ankle.

"Don't hurt him," you rasped.

"heh. don' worry, kid." His eyes went dark. "he won't feel a thing."

"Big talk from tiny," Flowey spat as if amused, though his body language coiled with intimidation. A terrible smile twisted across his face. "Is that what you told yourself when you tore your soul in half?" His head spun so far left it almost turned upside down. "Did killing yourself not go over well for you, trash bag? Thirty-fifth time's the charm. I think you should try again."

The anger in Sans' face deepened.

"Or I could help you out …"

A heavy vine peeled out from the snowy earth and snapped toward Sans—but he had vanished. Your head spun to place him. He dropped into the air some fifteen feet up, then disappeared again. And again. And again. He flashed in and out of reality, mesmerizing in bright blue fragments like cyan crystals. He worked his way closer to the flower, barely avoiding vines and thorns until he finally came down with a quick, clean sucker punch to Flowey's face.

"OW!" he shouted.

The yellow daisy rubbed at his cheek with one leaf like a sour child, but he seemed all right. Then, half a blue rib cage clawed out of the earth and imprisoned him behind their bars.

Sans bent over him, livid. Two of those frightening skulls hovered by each shoulder, jaws unhinged like snakes. Raging blue magic swirled in their mouths like portals to a very, very bad time.

"touch 'em again and you're off my mercy list, dandelion. got that?"

"Tsh … whatever …"

" ' n o ' ? "

Flowey glared up into the empty hollows of Sans' eyes with increasing fury. His leaves curled tightly, impudently, until finally his face twisted into something evil. A small earthquake rumbled at your knees.

"I SAID, 'WHATEVER,' YOU DEAF IDIOT!" he shrieked.

Sans barely had time to turn his head before the floor beneath you dropped with a resounding crunch. You screamed. A den of green snakes had snapped free and shot toward you faster than Undyne's spears. There was no evading them.

You closed your eyes, preparing for a death you had felt a thousand times, but had never expected to last.

A flash of bright blue filled your vision and suddenly there were arms around your waist. They snatched you into a roller coaster that rocketed from zero to a million in half a breath, so quickly you tore from existence into the invisible space between. A shortcut. You warped and spiraled through a million blinding colors until you tumbled out onto a cool, damp floor. The arms around you were gone. You heard a distant splash, then nothing but a steady, hyperactive beeping noise.

The wet, earthen scent told you where you were, even before opening your eyes.

Though your body complained, you ascended to your hands and knees. Almost every inch of you hurt like hell, even more where those vines had crushed you like a reticulated python. How hard you had hit the ground when falling back into reality certainly didn't help either.

The gears in your head started cranking. Falling, not landing. Sans had never taken you through a shortcut this wild. It was as if he had lost control.

"Sans?" you called.

No response but a chorus of tiny stamen voices shouting his name back to you.

Your eyes flew around Waterfall's bioluminescent cave interior. Glowing mushrooms and blue echo flowers flourished beside their mirrors in a churning river. The tunnels ahead glowed faintly in the distance amid patches of intimidating shadow. Dewy moss smattered the ground beneath you like a blue-green sponge.

That persistent, electric refrain of "beep, beep, beep" steadily slowed. The noise was impossible to pinpoint when every wall and flower echoed its rhythm in perfect time. You found Sans anyway, half submerged in a pool of glowing water.

He wasn't moving.

You scrambled over and dragged him out onto drier land. Some of that luminous blue water lingered in the fabric of his clothes. It dribbled along the stone in a path to the riverbank. You cradled his head in your lap.

The half-open recesses of his eye sockets remained dark, even as you said his name. You shook him lightly. Nothing.

The beeping sound, you realized, emanated from Sans' coat pocket. You fished inside for his phone. On the screen, a digital graph had spiked into a red zone, but was gradually sliding down into colder colors. Those hand symbols again. What on earth were they? Some strange monster code? A dialect or language you didn't speak?

You dropped your hand as if it weighed a hundred pounds. This wasn't right. You looked at your surroundings, at the insensible figure of your friend, at the phone in your grasp. None of this was right. It was all messy, all wrong, all your fault for bungling time into stupid, self-righteous knots. Your throat constricted and your eyes began to burn. Why couldn't you have just been satisfied?

Your heart skyrocketed as Sans massaged the now furrowed curve of his forehead. He hissed in pain, then propped himself up on one elbow.

"pretty sure i whacked that weed in a past life," he grumbled.

You laughed and threw your arms around his neck. He flinched in surprise.

"I'm sorry," you said, muffled in the fur of his hood. "I shouldn't have gone off on my own. I'm so sorry."

His eye sockets widened suddenly, as if he had forgotten all the details until then. He sighed and ruffled your hair.

"my bad for leaving you alone, kiddo," he said. He cautiously backed out of the hug, at which point his eye lights dashed over your many scrapes and bruises. "you okay?"

"Um." You held out that still-vibrating rectangle. "Your phone was going wild …"

He stared at you a little longer as if he couldn't care less about that. When the repetitive sound finally got to him, he took the device from your hands and silenced it.

"I guess your shortcuts are back?" you asked.

He nodded slowly, pensively. He didn't mention the burn in his soul or its loosened seams.

"kinda over-encouraged the snail, though," he said.

You wished he wouldn't be so nonchalant. Neither of you were in good shape, and this particular channel of Waterfall only endangered you more. You remembered, however, a secluded cave offshoot with a mouse-hole and some oddly-crystallized cheese just minutes away. If you made it there safely, you could lie low and recover while saving your resources.

You floated the idea to Sans, and he agreed. As you shifted to stand, however, he stopped you with a hand on your shoulder. You noticed it was shaking.

"eh, hold up a sec, bud," he said. "let me at least take care o' the nicks and knots before you go spelunking."

You shook your head. Absolutely not.

"c'mon," he said playfully. "would i offer if i wasn't up to it?"

"You know what it does to you …"

"frisk."

You bit your tongue at how softly he had said your name. His eyelights dimmed, and you immediately understood that his reasons were beyond practical.

It had been a long, long time since Sans had healed you. Historically, he had left the task to someone like Toriel, Undyne, or Papyrus, maybe even Alphys, but in a small handful of moments he had felt compelled to shoulder the responsibility. It had never been particularly pretty. Even small injuries pulled the spark out of his eyes, while Toriel could practically raise the dead before heaving a sigh.

As he braced your head between his hands, warmth flooded your body like stepping into a hot bath. Your headache slowly subsided. Your abrasions and contusions lessened. Though the sensation threatened to lull you to sleep, you watched him intently, searching for the smallest sign that he had pushed himself too far.

"heh … 's a little better, at least," he said, as the power faded from his fingers. "and all your cinnabunnies 're accounted for."

You smiled, still aching and bruised but noticeably better. You were glad to know he had sensed his limit. Still, as always, just a little bit of life had left his eyes.

The path ahead wound through stalagmites, columns, and glittering mounds of flowstone. Soda straw and helictite fingered down from the ceiling amid a healthy overgrowth of dragon's gold, all blue in the mushroom light. The river flowed alongside you, dancing with bioluminescence in the wake of creatures and monsters alike.

"He always calls me 'Chara,'" you said, as you traced the waters edge farther downstream. "It's like that horrible experience is constantly at the front of his mind, and it's all he can do to cope."

"can't face the real one, so he projects the role onto you?"

"I guess."

"hmm." Sans glanced through the waterfall now dividing you. "almost feel sorry for 'im."

You stopped past the stream of glowing blue and faced him. "Almost?"

He spread his hands and smiled. "plant just tried to snuff ya, kiddo. little hard for me to empathize."

You had to give him that, but your penchant for forgiveness wouldn't have it. You frowned and crossed your arms.

"Imagine how you'd feel if you lost your brother right in front of you," you said, "and there was something you could have done to stop it. Would you be able to live with that?"

Sans' grin fell flat. You'd never seen his face more haunted, as if the words had struck closer to home than you intended. He said nothing and continued to say nothing for a very, very long time. When you finally glanced behind you, you saw he walked with his hand to his chest, frowning at the walls.

"you think that's why you always find him there?" he asked quietly. "in the ruins."

"What do you mean?"

"the flower patch." At your silence, he added, "tori took the human's body with her when she left. buried the kid there." His dim eyes finally sought you out. "thought you knew."

You hadn't.

It all made sense, suddenly: the empty coffin engraved with Chara's name, Toriel's return to the garden after you spared her, Asriel's final journey before vanishing forever. Your sympathy for the flower swelled when you imagined him returning to visit the grave.

As you walked the long, narrow tunnel just outside your destination, Sans' phone began chiming intermittently. He shuffled to a halt halfway through the pass and stared at the screen. He smacked it.

"What's up?" you asked.

He didn't answer you immediately. Whatever was on the display flashed so quickly it illuminated his face in a rainbow of alternating colors. When he tore his eyes from it, he forced a small, uncertain smile.

"it's saying everything's cool, but … not? i ain't diggin', honestly. thing's contradicting itself." He chugged the air in preparation for a hefty sigh. "maybe it funked up on the way out, or …"

As your eyes scraped along the rock formations around you, the color drained from your face. This nondescript cave wall, this empty road with nothing special to show on its skin, held a troubling secret underneath. You had only glimpsed it, and though your mind had instructed you to forget, you never truly could.

Sans caught the chill that ran up your spine. "bud?" he asked. "y'okay?"

"There's … a gray door here," you said quietly. "Sometimes. I've only seen it once, but …"

"a door?" Sans notched his brow with growing concern. "don't tell me ya went in."

When you stared at him uneasily, his frown deepened.

"There was a monster inside," you said, observing the dark shadow where a door had once stood. "He was … sad, I think … just standing there, alone, frozen in the center of the room. There was something wrong with him, though, like that wasn't how he was supposed to look. He was twisted, disfigured, and his face was … cracked apart at the eyes, almost like what used to be a … a skull …"

Sans' phone hit the ground with a sharp crack. His spine had gone rigid, his eyelights snuffed, his hand shaking.

"Sans?" you asked cautiously.

He didn't respond. It frightened you to see him so overcome, especially after what Papyrus had said to you about his soul. It was important, you told yourself, to remain calm. Whatever ledge he wavered on, you needed to step him back from it slowly and carefully. You inched nearer.

"Sans …"

"where did he go," he whispered.

"What?"

"where did he go?"

Sans had taken a small step-turned-shortcut and seized your shoulders so urgently it startled you. The pupil of his left eye flared to life again in blue and yellow, flashing sharp and insistent.

"He disappeared!" you blurted. "When I touched him. It's like he couldn't hold himself there and just … poofed."

Sans' eyes, more desperate than you had ever seen, darted over you as if scouring for the smallest trace of a lie. You could feel, then, that same power he had used to scan your soul in Judgment Hall, that sensation of piercing sunlight seeking to cast a shadow. Then, when he found nothing but flatland inside you, everything softened: his eyes, his posture, his hold of you. He let go.

As he stepped back, he covered his face with both hands and breathed an apology. Then came another, and another. They rolled out his mouth like a small river, inaudible if not for the echoing cave walls. You couldn't be sure, but by the sound of them, they were not directed at you.

You eased a hand onto his back and caressed the fleece of his coat. It took him a second to clear his head, but eventually he lowered his hands from his eyes. They were dark, emptier than you had ever seen.

"Did you know him?" you asked.

You only received silence as an answer.

Around the bend, that reclusive grotto welcomed you, as dry and safe as you remembered. Cheese crystallized in alexandrite rested on a small, nondescript table near a small hole. It had always come across as nonsensical to you, placed with no purpose but to taunt the mouse living nearby. Retrieving the snack seemed an unattainable goal, but you had once seen yourself in that small creature, running after pipedreams and determined to succeed. Both of you had won in the end, and yet here you were, unsatisfied with your reward.

Sans didn't speak for the rest of the evening. Instead, he stared into his hands, his phone, or your head on his knee. While you drifted to sleep, lulled by tiny rodentian snores, he sat awake, gazing off into the hallway you had left behind.

Could it really be him? Was Wingdings alive? Or was this some cruel echo, a vain hope he grasped based on a child's vague memory?

Maybe an hour later, Sans slipped out from under you and crept to the end of the cavern. Once he ensured you still slept, he disappeared into that darker yet darker tunnel.

The emptiness stretched forever. He could hardly calculate how long it took to reach the center of the pass, where his phone had been most troublesome, where you had told him a story he couldn't unhear. The alarm started going off again, more grating against his ears when ablaze in silence. He hoped you wouldn't hear.

A door that was there sometimes.

He didn't want to look. He kept his eyes to the earth, so afraid to lift them that they seemed to weigh more than Mount Ebott above. When he finally did, his bones nearly caved away, as if drawn into the void itself.

A door that was there this time.

He shivered. A cold, cold aura pawed through the door cracks in want of escape. Its claws hooked on his ankles, calling him, begging him. The door looked too tall, somehow, but he did not question it. The only thing he wondered was if he should break the seal, if he should test fate, if he should put his very existence on the line to glimpse a phantom.

He had to know.

His hand reached for the doorknob.

He had to see it himself.

When he walked through, it was like closing his eyes, and when he opened them he wasn't where he thought he would be. He realized he was lying down, staring up at an all-too-familiar ceiling in a dim, unkempt room. Cold leaked through the nearby window, past which powdery white fell in a loosely woven sheet. Snow. Always snow. The same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before …

His chest felt like it was crumbling. Reset sickness overcame him, the kind that spun his insides and burned his brain in an attempt to reject him.

No.

No, this couldn't be happening.

Not again.

He began to hyperventilate. He curled in on himself and cradled his dizzy head. Papyrus' morning song drifted up to him from the kitchen.

You said it was over. Why would you lie?

He tore at his skull until it split at the eyes, one fissure high on the left, one fissure low on the right.

Why would you turn back now?

His soul started ripping on its own, snapping, chipping away piece by piece by …

Sans jolted awake beside a small table and some crystallized cheese. As he wildly reevaluated his surroundings—a cave offshoot illuminated with dim blue light—it slowly registered that this was reality, not the nightmare he had just escaped. There had been no reset. There had been no door. And yet those searing cracks kept building in his soul like an eggshell under pressure.

Crack.

Panic dug under his sternum like a sharp knife.

stop, he thought desperately to himself. stop it. you're okay. it wasn't real.

Crack.

pull yourself together. you can't leave the kid like that. they've only got one shot, they could …

He realized your head still lay on his lap. You had slept through his startled return to reality and remained cozily close as if nothing could harm you at his side. He cautiously slipped his shaking fingers into the mess of your dark brown hair.

keep sleeping, he asked you in his heart. don't look at this mess.

He knew that if you witnessed him crumbling, you would blame yourself. He couldn't let you see his suffering, that sleeping had been impossible, that closing his eyes had only conjured nightmares. He couldn't let you see the cost of a hundred resets, time-turns you had instigated even if he had been the one to cut his own throat. He couldn't let you see how he really felt.

How he really was .

"So, my sweet skeleton, please, tell me. How are you?"

"i'm …"

When Toriel had asked him this, he had failed to conjure words. The dust of his emotions had been breathed into a flying fury. He huffed a rueful, humorless quiver of a laugh.

"honestly? i think i'm barely holdin' on," he had said. "my soul looks like it's been through a wood-chipper and i don't know if i'm gonna make it. i'm … scared." He looked up into the warm empathy of her burgundy eyes. "i don't wanna die anymore."

that's right, he thought now. i don't want to die anymore. He held onto that thought like a lifeline, and the pain in his soul slowly eased. His will to live soldered the pieces back together in brilliant red. i don't want to die.

You snuggled closer to him in search of warmth. You needed him, he remembered. You cared about him. If he couldn't pull through for himself, he could do it for you …

That dark, whispering hallway entranced him once again.

… and maybe for him, too.

A/N: Oh, boy! Getting into some more plot-heavy stuff. Not many notes for you this time.

Cross-posting! I've started uploading on Tumblr ("riftfic")! Only the first two chapters up so far, but it's a start. I also plan to get the ball rolling on Archive of Our Own this weekend? Username there is also "scians."

New Cover! I made cover art for this! I mean I made the last cover too, but kind of cobbled it together from another piece of fan art I'd made forever ago. You can see it full res on the tumblr page. There's more fan art on my main blog, if you're into that. You can get to it through the FAQ section. :)

Up Next! Smells a little fishy. NGAHHH!

Thank you for reading! If you have thoughts or feelings I love to hear them.