Fighting to stay awake was a losing battle. As Sans felt himself carried through the Underground, the weather grew steadily cooler and damper, though the plates of armor beside him radiated his bones with Hotland heat. The warmth coupled with cool breezes invited him too kindly to slumber.

As he blinked in and out of consciousness, he caught glimpses of blue light, waterfalls, long ribbons of red fins like hair. Undyne, huh? Well, that was interesting. Guess she really did care about him, after all, or maybe she was just thinking about …

His soul jumped painfully enough to have split. His hand shot out and grappled onto the lip of her breastplate. He managed to meet her eye just briefly before his fingers began to slip.

"don' tell pup …"

He could only hope she heard his whisper before darkness scarfed him down like a hungry dragon. A sinking sensation wiped clean his perception of reality as if he had dropped into an endlessly deep pool of water. His consciousness rose away from him as a sheet of diamond bubbles. No … he couldn't let himself sleep, not if he could help it. He needed the ungiving ground at his feet. He needed to know this was real. He clung to the rising air and it pulled him higher again. When he opened his eyes he found himself in the dim light of his messy room, wrapped in a wad of green blankets. Snow fell outside his window …

He jolted awake and wished he hadn't. His spine snapped audibly, and his joints ached under a weight like the entire Underground. When he tried to lift his skull, gravity drew it back to the pillow with the strongest of all blue magic.

He dragged his empty eyes across the walls in search of clues. It reassured him to find that he wasn't actually in Snowdin. Rather, he lay flat on a queen-sized bed, shoes and jacket off, draped in a warm, microfiber blanket.

At the farthest edge of the room, a cylindrical, ceiling-high aquascape tank caught his eyes first. Nothing but plants, algae, tiny snails, and the like. Its bioluminescent water spilled cyan light over a modest collection of shonen anime posters and an impeccable taste in decor. Camisoles, boots, and a pair of sweatpants were scattered across the fish scale pattern tiles, hardly a mess at all when compared to his trash dungeon of a room.

Paper drafts for a handwritten message littered the desk at his bedside. Most had been crumpled and thrown in a recycling bin beneath, but a rough copy still lay out in the open.

Dear Alphys …

He looked respectfully away to the collection of bottles and jars clinging close to the table's edge, one of which contained a metal polish. The supply ran low, all applied to that heavy suit of armor hanging on its stand in the corner.

When he finally mustered the strength to sit, his side didn't protest as much as expected. He touched his ribs cautiously through the tear in his t-shirt, then peeled back the fabric for a better look. He had never been so well bandaged in his life. A lingering glimmer around the wrappings told him Undyne had used the good stuff, the kind that heals as it protects.

By the quiet piano music trailing to him under the door, she was likely here if he wanted to thank her …

He quickly reevaluated that thought. Undyne's Good Samaritan nature might have applied in his moment of need, but what about now? Safer to give her the slip through the walls, he decided. Sparks at his fingers, but no luck; his magic reserves had run dry. It would be a while before he could safely teleport.

He ran his phalanges coarsely across his skull. Might as well face the music now.

In the next room, Undyne's fingers flitted along the ivory white keys of her baby grand with incredible precision. Long ago, Sans had thought soft serenity impossible at her hands, but then he had come to understand the sea monster through Alphys' gentle eyes. He lingered in the doorway, listening, allowing the gentle pad of keys to smooth the roughened edges of his soul. He could have fallen asleep there if the thought didn't frighten him.

He shuffled silently across the room to watch over her shoulder. After going unnoticed a moment longer, a jester's grin spread across his face. He leaned forward and, at a lull in her original song, pounded "Chopsticks" an octave higher.

Undyne's hands crashed into the keys with an ugly, disjointed chord. The piano bench fell over. She snapped around to face him, spear in hand, flat on her feet.

Sans kept cool to the end of the pre-chorus before making eye contact.

"sup."

"The hell are you doing?" she snarled. "GO BACK TO SLEEP, RIGHT NOW."

"o cap'n, my cap'n," he laughed and planted a hand over the blue heart on his t-shirt. "a week ago, thatta been music to my ears."

Her sharp, glaring eye followed him like a hawk as he lifted the piano bench back onto its legs.

"guessin' i broke no pillow records."

"Less than an hour, so go back to bed."

"nah." He sat down and dropped an elbow with discord onto the highest set of keys. He propped his grinning head against his knuckles.

They stared each other down, but neither budged that easily. As stubborn as Undyne might have been, once Sans set his heels, it could take either the force of an army or one Papyrus to bowl him over. Undyne realized this—either that or she had weighed the pros and cons of chucking him across the room and found the cons unfortunately overwhelming. Her spear vanished in a burst of blue embers as she sat beside him, growling.

Sans' dim eyes fell to watch her webbed fingers resume playing. The motions entranced him, inviting his mind to mellow into a delightful emptiness of thought.

"ya coulda left me," he said.

Her hands slowed to a stop, but she didn't look at him.

"i'm a traitor, right?"

"You know I couldn't do that to Papyrus."

"heh. yeah, figured."

She clutched the bench beneath her as if bracing for impact. "And," she said, "what he told me this morning. It really … kind of shook me."

The incremental ticking of a wall clock's second hand filled their silence. Crickets chirped outside the window, through which Waterfall's soft blue glow failed to battle the artificial light. Compared to the state of her room, this hardwood space had been kept surprisingly clean: a sterile, orderly front.

"bet ya saw my soul if you were up under my shirt," he said.

"Uh." Some color burned in Undyne's face. "A little? Guh, skeletons are gross."

"live up to the expectation?"

Undyne's good eye softened, then, though her gaze remained fixed elsewhere. "Sans … you should be with Papyrus."

"that bad, huh?"

"I've never seen anything like it. It's like I was looking at a dead man walking."

He burst out laughing at the double entendre.

"I wasn't making a joke," said Undyne.

"sorry."

Her wording brought back a memory, though its details had been percolated into something unrecognizable. Someone had made a similar statement not long ago, he thought, but he couldn't remember who, or where, or when. It burned at the back of his brain, but he chose to forget it for now.

"I don't care how you ended up like that," said Undyne. "I don't give two fucks what you do to yourself, but …"

"thanks."

"If … someone else … ended up in the same situation …"

Undyne's shoulders had slumped, and her hand caressed the smooth, ultramarine scales of her bare arm. The bright gold of her open eye stared off through her bedroom wall onto a cluttered desk and a pile of half-written letters.

Sans' eyelights dimmed.

"I want to know what that human did," said Undyne gently, "to change your mind."

Sans slid off the piano seat and circled the instrument thoughtfully. His memory sifted through images: your hand in his, your arms at his back, your thumbs battling waterfalls in his eyes. Even if the remnants of your last exchange embittered their edges, he couldn't help smiling.

"they made a future seem worth the wait," he said.

Your head still throbbed, though you could only feel it vaguely when astral projected among the cosmos' most distant galaxies. Though your body lay flat on the wood panels of Napstablook's asymmetrical home, your soul floated on nothing tangible, only air, only feelings. You were a tiny, insignificant piece of garbage, drifting through the universe …

Something stirred in your memory among the stars, a pocket of darkness emptier than space itself. You had not noticed its presence before. You approached but found you could not venture too close; your metaphorical hand shied away of its own accord. Leave it alone, said your subconscious. You're better off without it. But if you could only reach it, maybe then your headache would …

What time was it?

You jumped back to reality and checked the clock on Sans' phone. You sighed in relief. In a few minutes, Papyrus would be waiting outside Undyne's house for his super special, super secret, one-on-one training.

Though your session of "feeling like garbage" had officially ended, you still felt like trash. You had been honest enough to tell Papyrus that you and Sans had split ways, but flat out lied when asked where his brother had gone. You couldn't bring yourself to describe that last glimpse of Sans, carried off into the dark, limp in Undyne's arms.

As you approached that colossal fish monument in the neighboring lot, you kept your eyes peeled for a tall, flamboyant skeleton. Your heart drank a vat of helium and soared to the surface, however, when you discovered a skeleton of opposite caliber instead. Sans stood just beside Undyne's practice mannequin, searching through his pockets with a worried frown.

You did not pause to speculate what you might do upon reaching him. Your feet had already snatched the cave floor ahead of you. At only meters away, however, Sans' eyes halted you. You had never seen those sockets darken so fast, not when looking at you.

Neither of you said a word. Standing so still was like drinking the perpetual night of Waterfall with an unquenchable thirst, so much that you became a part of it, an echo flower with no voice or song. One too many seconds passed. You clenched your fists until your nails came close to drawing blood. You couldn't stand it. You opened your mouth.

"you don' happen to have my phone," Sans interjected quietly, "do ya? dropped it somewhere."

"Oh." You surfaced the device from your own pocket and shyly handed it back to him.

Both of you lingered there, holding onto the cell phone as if it were the only thing linking you together. As your hands inevitably parted, the gap between you became tangible. You both chose to speak at the same time.

"kid, look, i …"

"Tell me you're okay," you said.

He stared for a long moment. "no."

A knot tied in the pit of your stomach.

He sighed regretfully, then, and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the mannequin. "don' be a dummy."

"WHAT? WHAT?" it shrieked.

"o'course i'm okay," he chuckled. "was just kiddin'."

You didn't think so, and your face told him. When he slid the phone into his coat pocket, you noticed the massive gash in its side and the faint glow of Undyne's bandages shining through. You weren't entirely sure what you were looking at, but that rip hadn't been there before.

He caught where you had hooked your eyes, and pinned his arm against the evidence.

"What happened to your … ?"

"nothin' happened to nothin'."

"But your jacket …"

"my half of the story ain't ever been important, kiddo, so don't go chalkin' it up now," he said calmly. "i shouldn't have butted in like i did. that's all there is to it."

"Sans."

As his eyes drifted behind you, his grin flickered back to full strength. "chaperone's here."

Behind you, Papyrus was running at breakneck speed from the ferry, waving his hand in wide sweeps above his head. You waved back. When your eyes returned to Sans, you caught him stepping slowly away, bones disappearing in a flurry of blue.

"catch ya later, bud," he said with a small salute.

Then, he was gone.

As your eyes locked onto the dark patch of mossy earth where Sans had once stood, you wondered with a heavy heart if he meant it.

Sans staggered out of his ill-advised shortcut onto a damp stone floor among tall grass. He steadied himself and lifted a hand to his sweat-dampened forehead. Teleporting with such limited magic had been a mistake, he thought, even if it were just around the bend. Talking to you and Papyrus, however—handling your worry, your pity—would be far worse punishment.

He followed the scenic route through Waterfall with no destination, only wandering for peace of mind. He found his zen on a long network of bridges over the deepest, darkest lake in the Underground, a stretch of water several miles wide. He meandered across the wooden slats, staring past their edge into an overwhelming void. The bridge creaked and bent with age under his feet, infirm and ancient, standing through magical reinforcement alone. From the way his phone vibrated, he wondered if the overpass suffered from temporal instability like the bridge he and Undyne had destroyed.

Even before his last readings confirmed it, there had been no question to him that your many resets had driven a pike into time's already weakened shell. In your attempts to save him, so many so quickly had likely exacerbated things. If the damage had already reached Waterfall, he worried for anyone in Hotland, the Core, and the Capital.

If the rift were spreading, what could he even do about it? For decades, he had slaved away in his basement with nothing to show. The machine was unfixable. He lacked the parts … and the genius. If dire enough, maybe he could ask for help from …

His soul somersaulted with panic. Alphys. If things were breaking apart, Undyne had more reason to worry than she knew. The dinosaur monster faced more danger than anyone, living just above the rift. The thought of losing yet another person to that thing …

He pulled out his phone, closed down the temporal sensor app, and opened his text message inbox. He scrolled nervously through a small pile of messages he had ignored until then.

Alphys (Tues, 4:55 PM): "go right"

Alphys (Tues, 4:58 PM): "r u guys ok"

Alphys (Tues, 4:59 PM): "pls text back"

Alphys (Tues, 5:20 PM): "oh i see you now! =^.^="

Alphys (Tues, 5:20 PM): "HOW DID U GET TO WATERFALL SO FAST OMG"

Alphys (Today, 1:20 PM): "u ok? :("

He sighed through the hollows of his sinus cavity. It was pointless to wonder if Undyne had told her. Here in the Underground, Alphys bordered on omniscient. Her cameras could be watching him right now, for all he knew. Odds were she had seen everything.

Sans (3:40 PM): "chipper. you?"

Alphys (3:40 PM): "same, i guess."

Though relieved to receive a response, he knew they only lied to each other. Alphys' self-esteem issues were no secret to him. Even before the determination experiments had torn her down, she had long struggled for confidence.

Alphys (3:42 PM): "u know u can talk to me, right?"

Sans (3:45 PM): "yeah. same goes for you, alph."

Alphys (3:45 PM): "thx. we should hang out"

He smiled.

The shape of a child drew his eyes. They stood at the nearest overlook, staring hollowly into the faint blue mist above the lake far below. He recognized the silhouette immediately as Monster Kid, though something in the air tasted unsettlingly … wrong.

"hey, bud," Sans said with a forced smile. He pocketed his phone politely. "what's the hold-up? thought you were headed home."

"Have you ever thought about a world where everything is exactly the same, except you don't exist?" said the monster child quietly.

"uh …"

"Everything functions perfectly without you." She dropped her head and laughed contritely. "The thought terrifies me."

What little color Sans had melted away from him. That voice definitely wasn't right. Something about it grated against his senses like sandpaper, as if he shouldn't be hearing it, as if the very universe fought its presence. It ran a cold finger up every rib and vertebra with a harsh chill he hadn't felt since … since when?

The monster turned to him to reveal empty white eyes and a blank expression. Her entire body was gray, and not simply because the environment starved for light. She lacked any hue whatsoever. Sans couldn't help wondering if she really existed.

"Oh," the child murmured. "It's you."

"heh … sure is," he muttered uneasily, taking a step backward.

"Sans, right?" Goner Kid continued. "He talks about you a lot … when his mind's there."

Sans froze, stiff as a board. His eyes widened to full circles, the lights of his pupils reduced to pinpricks.

"who does?" he whispered, never more afraid of an answer in his life.

"The doctor," she said, smiling with something akin to admiration. "Your brother."

.

Save for a few subtle differences in words and gestures, your hangout with Undyne followed the usual steps. Then, as she handed you a scalding hot mug of golden flower tea over a broken table, the conversation took a different turn than expected.

"It's funny you chose tea," Undyne said quietly. She picked at the edges of her fish-shaped cup and glanced toward her room. "I didn't really drink the stuff—kinda gross—but Asgore got me and my, uh, friend these matching teacups." She grinned wide, baring almost every needlepoint tooth. "Plus he gave me a box of his special stash so now I really don't have an excuse not to."

"You don't like tea, but you drink it anyway?"

"Sometimes you do things you wouldn't normally do, for friends." She became pensive, then, staring into the steam of her mug. "Alphys—my friend—used to be really good pals with Sans when he lived in Hotland. Then, one day, he just packed up and left. Quit his job, broke his lease, hardly said a word to anyone. Alphys was … wrecked. The way she told it to me, he was her only real friend and he just left her there to rot without so much as a goodbye. Jerk didn't talk to her for years."

The story took you aback. That didn't sound like Sans …

"Imagining him stepping in to protect someone, taking a spear to the side for someone … I wouldn't have been able to picture it before today."

You paled. A spear in the side?

"So let me ask you something," Undyne said through a steep, harsh frown. "Are you manipulating him? Is it your fault he's all messed up?"

Sans felt as if the bridge had been cut loose. His hands shook. His eyes darkened. Did the atmosphere lose density, or had he just forgotten to breathe? He grabbed for his chest as a piece of his soul decided whether or not to heal or dust away into the hollow of his tattered ribcage.

When he had overcome the raw pain coursing through his life essence, he eyed Goner Kid with giant sockets to take in every inch of her. What was she? Did she say she … didn't exist? But that would be a paradox. Could she be another person lost to the rift, then? Forgotten by everyone, just like …

"Oh, but … do you remember him?" asked the gray monster. "He worries you've forgotten, says you don't talk about him like he does you."

"no, that's not …" Sans interrupted, near tears. "hell, i can't stop rememberin' for everyone else."

Goner Kid smiled only a little.

Sans fumbled to resurrect his phone, determined to take a reading of this mysterious gray being if it fucking killed him. He desperately closed Alphy's small string of unread messages and launched his homemade application. The placeholder icon jumped up and down, up and down, up and down …

"I'll be sure to tell him," said Goner Kid.

The monochrome monster's unnatural voice faded as she spoke, and by the time Sans looked up, she had vanished.

As your eyes filled with tears, Undyne's shoulders set in stone.

"What … what are you doing?" she asked. She grimaced. "D-Don't be such a weenie …"

You hid behind your burning mug of tea. "It's my fault," you blubbered. "It's all my fault."

You believed it. You were the reason he had tried and succeeded in committing suicide. You were the reason he was so tired, so broken, such a shadow of his former self. During the resets, even when he had not understood your actions, he had given you the benefit of the doubt. He had given it to you a hundred times over. Now, when the tables had turned, when he had gone against your wishes just once … you had given him none. You sobbed into your tea.

"Seriously," said Undyne, narrowing her yellow eye at the wall. "Am I the only one down here with self-respect? Pull yourself together!"

You only continued to cry. Your mind was cluttered with images of his dust, his empty eyes, the way he had looked at you just outside the door… . Stars, your head hurt.

As another minute passed, you felt a stiff, awkward, scaly arm around your shoulder.

"There, uh, there," Undyne grumbled. "Punk."

The weirdness of it certainly helped your tears dry. You looked up into her face.

"If you're that worked up about it," the fish monster relented, "I take it back. I don't think you're mind-controlling anyone. A wimp of a soul like yours isn't strong enough. Heck, I bet it couldn't even break the barrier!"

That was far from reassuring to hear right now, but you smiled anyway.

"Don't waste your time sniveling about that guy, anyway," said Undyne with a new frown. She took back her seat. "Jerk's not worth it."

"He's not a jerk …"

"After what he did?" She slammed her fists down onto the table. "Alphys doesn't deserve that. She deserves a real friend, someone who will be there for her, someone who will tell her how GREAT SHE REALLY IS … and … stuff."

You eyed her conspicuously. "So … why don't you tell her?"

"Uh … ! Well, I, uh …" Color rose in Undyne's face, highlighting the edges of her scales with a red fringe. Slowly, her expression hardened with more and more resolve. "Yeah. Yeah! YEAH! You're right! It's already written out, all I have to do is deliver …" She flinched, and her confidence vanished just as quickly.

A teasing smile grew across your face. "Are you nervous?"

"No," Undyne snipped. She crossed her arms and her legs, and her unguarded eye darted away from you. "Hotland sucks."

As you considered your next words very carefully, you tested the temperature of your tea again. Your already burnt tongue really wished you hadn't.

"I could deliver it for you …" you said.

"Whoa, really?" Undyne whipped around as if you had invented the light bulb and set it off above her head. She beamed. "I should've thought of that!"

You smiled nervously. In all honesty, Papyrus should have been the one to suggest it, though not at this time. Diverging so far from the usual path frightened you, but the usual path had ceased to exist. Today was just like any other.

Undyne disappeared into her bedroom for several minutes, and when she returned, she slammed an envelope in front of you. The impact reduced that broken table into a meager pile of wood.

"If you read it," she said, inches from your face, "I'LL KILL YOU."

Sans collapsed to sit on the damp planks of that creaky old bridge. He wrapped his arms around himself loosely and stared transfixed into the untied laces of his off-brand high tops. The image began to swim.

He was alive.

Rivers trickled down the grooves in his cheekbones. If that were true, if that gray specter had not been a figment of his imagination, was this news better … or worse? What horrible state plagued his brother, now?

Sans could not tell if he sat there hours or minutes. His thoughts had spiraled. Question after question surfaced fewer and fewer answers. What should he do? Was there anything to do? If only he had managed to scan that gray child, he might have something to work with. Surrounding readings only showed the same ambiguities as that dark hallway in Waterfall: all right, but not all right. Diagnosing inconsistencies like this proved difficult.

The scent of smoke trailed through Waterfall's long caves. If Undyne's house had caught fire, your date must be ending. He thought he had wandered too far to notice it, but he was awfully tired and his legs were short.

Wiping his face with one sleeve, he reminded himself he couldn't linger on the past when someone else relied on him in the present. But should you rely on him? Even though he had found rest in Undyne's care, it had only been one hour to the twenty or more left unclaimed. Closing his eyes filled him with dread that if he left the waking world, even for a second, he would return to find another timeline stripped out from under him. He dropped his face into his hands. What good was a broken shield?

Nevertheless, he followed the smoke back the way he had come. In that private cave nook, he found what he expected: a sad looking fish house engulfed in flames. The fire hissed and flared, chewing the building down into scale stones and ashes.

You stood alone outside, watching the raging inferno, your mind elsewhere. Sans eased his way to your side. Together, you observed in silence. The warmth breathed like a demon into your faces.

"head still hurtin'?" he murmured.

You nodded.

You expected that to be it until his fingers glided through the mess of your dark brown hair. His touch dismantled your well, brick by brick, until the water fell freely over. You hid your tears behind your hands. He shouldn't be so kind to you. You didn't deserve it.

"i mean, it's not bad thinkin'," said Sans in a sly attempt to cheer you up, "but … pretty sure it'll take more than a few teardrops to put out this bonfire."

Though the joke managed to pull a small laugh from you, it ultimately helped little.

After waiting another minute with no change, he ushered you into his arms and tucked you under his chin.

You hated yourself for not resisting. You hated that you were the one being consoled, that he, the victim, now offered his shoulder to the offender. Yet here you stayed, allowing yourself in that moment to be nothing more than the human child—not the angel of the underground, not the pacifist savior, not even "Frisk." You fed your hand through the hole in his coat to his bandaged rib cage, and he didn't fight you.

"I'm sorry … "

"chin up, kiddo," he said gently. "we've still got a ways to go."

We. Your heart lightened at the word, and your eyes began to dry. As hard as you might have tried, you had failed to push him away.

The house was on fire, and you left it to burn behind you.

You walked together past Blook Family Farm, down through the luminant marsh to the bank beside the ferry. As you waited for the Riverperson to show, as they always did, Sans checked his phone for scan data and messages.

A text from Papyrus asked if everything went well. Sans answered that "everything went, but mostly the house, up in flames,'" to which he didn't receive an immediate response. Below that, the notification marker pointed to his conversation with Alphys, which he had forgotten until then. He dragged their text history to the front of his messaging app.

Alphys (3:42 PM): "u know u can talk to me, right?"

Sans (3:45 PM): "yeah. same goes for you, alph."

Alphys (3:45 PM): "thx. we should hang out"

Alphys (3:45 PM): "u know, like before"

Sans' eyes extinguished as if the soul had been sucked out of him.

Alphys (3:47 PM): "when dings was here"

NOTES

Oh my.

Boy, did this chapter change a bunch while writing it. A lot of stuff ended up getting pushed to the next chapter, but it's much better for it, trust me.

On the plus side, since most of it's already written, hopefully Chapter 8 will be ready to go sooner than usual. I'm going to aim for the 1st, so we can catch up and get back to the 1st/15th update schedule. (Fingers crossed, though. It might end up taking longer than I think.)

Hope you enjoyed! If you have thoughts or feelings, I love hearing them.

Next Up! Not everyone finds it that easy to forget.