In his many decades underground and few short years above, Sans had never given much thought to the afterlife. While others spent their lives bickering over gods and empty voids, he felt content to lie back on his lawn chair, sipping fancy ketchup packets until the sun fizzled like a wet flame. They could believe whatever the hell or heaven they wanted. Questions about the afterlife could not be answered until after life, and were therefore not worth asking—but he did not have to ask anymore. He had seen the ferry's final stop. After more than thirty times diving headfirst into a river no one should survive, he knew the afterlife for what it was, and the afterlife was nothing.

He waited for emptiness to arrive, for his thoughts to fade out into cold oblivion as they had before. His frazzled mind swayed, smitten with the sensation of falling, but remained intact. By now, he should have been ash. By now, he should have been nothing. This was not nothing. This was something else.

In something else he drifted, hovering in a limbo between time and space, between life and death. No sight. No sound. His senses may as well have been absent, so deep ran the emptiness around him. It would be no surprise if he had been ripped from existence entirely, redacted from the memories of those who knew him … just like his brother.

The day before it all went wrong, Wingdings had called everyone together for a mandatory team meeting. His small collection of fifteen specialists had gathered in the central hub, past the same red doors Sans had just left behind. Sans remembered how Alphys had stood close, how their matching lab coats had touched. He remembered how aware he had been of his still unwashed sleeve defiling her clean clothes. He shied away.

Before its final wreckage, the lab had been a mess of a different kind, filled with computers and unusual machines that ran on electricity and raw magic in unison. A persistent hum of energy, broken by the occasional click and beep, pervaded over a silence that stretched long enough to unsettle both Sans and his coworkers. He watched his brother's back, filled with unease for more reasons than one.

In the week after Wingdings ruptured his own skull, Sans had become more aware of his brother's behavior. The royal scientist had enacted confusing changes, such as tearing down illustrated posters or asking them, however kindly, not to wear particular colors. In one star moment, he had fallen backward out of his chair as if something had jumped unexpectedly onto his desk—but whatever it was, no one else had seen it. In this and every other situation, Dings played it off like a joke or a quirk and poked fun at himself for his actions. Everyone bought it … except Sans. Whether Dings simply stared into the invisible, carried on conversations under his breath, or dropped armfuls of research to hold his head, Sans noted each moment with rising concern. He wanted to help him, but in every attempt, Wingdings had brushed him off, like dirt off his sleeve.

At the room's center, Wingdings stared through the large circles of his seldom worn glasses at the hard-earned fruits of his project. What Sans could see of his face looked empty, emotionless, maybe even broken, but in a way very different from the cracks in his brow and cheekbone. When finally he turned, he did not look at them, not really.

"The deadline has been advanced," he said flatly. "We'll be testing the machine tomorrow."

The team did not respond immediately. They, like Sans, had been frozen in the chill of his words. All Sans' worst fears crashed down on him like an avalanche. As the scientists and engineers thawed enough to mutter confusedly among themselves, he continued to stand there silently, lights gone from his eyes.

"tomorrow?" he finally stammered. "are you insane?"

The team quieted. Alphys grimaced.

Sans regretted his wording immediately. Wingdings still did not look at him, but by the tiniest twitch of his mouth, Sans knew it had insulted him. He also knew they stood roughly three choice words from arguing like children in front of esteemed colleagues. He trod lightly.

"don't get me wrong," he said. "the changes you made last week solved almost everything, theoretically, but we're still playin' catch up here. build just ain't stable."

"Then stabilize it."

"it's not that simple," he said as calmly as he could. "conversions are still a fuckin' disaster and just this morning, programming was lookin' at weeks, maybe even months before they've squashed all the bugs, assuming no more crawl out …"

"Well …" spoke up another team member in the back.

Sans turned. His eyes pleaded with her not to encourage him.

"There's a workaround," she said, despite catching his look. "Quick-fix the errors without a true solve … b-but that wouldn't be cohesive t …"

"Good," said Dings. "Whatever we have to do to …"

"it's not safe to take shortcuts," Sans interrupted.

"Whatever we have to do," Wingdings reiterated firmly. He passed heavy, tired eyes over every member of the project except his brother. "I know this is a lot to ask. You can go home—I won't fault you—but if this is going to work, I'm counting on all of you to do the best you can … please."

Every monster exchanged a tentative glance, but their faces returned to him, resolute.

"Take a moment to make arrangements, if you have to." Dings forced one of his most charismatic smiles. "It's gonna be a long night, kids."

As the team dispersed, Sans sought his brother's attention, but in fewer than two breaths the royal scientist had been swept up in the dizzying rush. In the rare moments Sans grasped an opportunity, catching his eye had been difficult. It did not bother him at first, but after the sixth or seventh time and a not-too-subtle turn of his brother's head, he realized Dings had intentionally ignored him.

Several excruciatingly long hours later, he managed to pester his brother into submission. Wingdings threw down his papers, threw back his head, and led him out from the main laboratory into the hallway. They wound up in a small room, a corner used for little more than storage and whispers. Boxes, files, and outdated equipment lined the walls from floor to ceiling among a few extra chairs and tables. Under a single, warm bulb dangling from its wires, they stood as far away from each other as possible, which was in truth only a few feet. The moment the door clapped shut, Sans opened his mouth.

"ya mind tellin' me what you're thinkin'?" he asked, trying and failing not to sound like the one who raised him.

Dings still avoided his eyes.

"there ain't a lot i'd ask ya not to fuck with, but this sure as hell's one." Sans paced with what little room he had. "shit's dangerous enough if we do everythin' right. there's a reason we had aimed to test in ten weeks …"

"Well, I don't have ten weeks."

Sans stopped dead. He hadn't thought his nerves could fray any further.

"I had a talk with Asgore," said Dings quietly.

Sans saw his mouth move but hardly processed the words. The lights in his eyes shrank away to darkness.

"He seems to think I should … take a break."

"oh." Sans shifted his feet. He bit his knuckle and weighed his words. "you're … you're going to, then?"

At the faint hope Sans had just betrayed, Dings finally faced him, eyes piercing with hurt and incredulity.

"I don't have a choice," he said. He struggled to keep his voice steady. "He's given me until Friday to wrap up what I'm doing, and then … then you'll be stepping in."

Sans' still blackened eye sockets widened. The magic rushed out of him, so far away it felt irreclaimable. "what do you mean, stepping in?"

"What else could I mean?" Dings balled his fists, clenched his teeth—but his anger soon dulled to an ache. "I know you met with him behind my back," he said. At his brother's prolonged silence, Wingdings' harsh frown returned. "Say something."

"i …" Sans felt faint. "i was worried …"

"You were worried," Dings laughed softly, but a shimmer of light caught at the corners of his eye sockets. He hid them behind his hand. "Well, that makes it okay, then," he breathed. "I mean forget my life's work. Forget the past five years. Forget how close we were to a breakthrough. You were worried."

Sans would have felt better if Wingdings had yelled at him, cussed him out, told him to leave, anything but this quiet resignation. Sans had only seen him like this once, when he had been hurt past the point of anger, deep down into hollow apathy. Sans had never thought he would break his little brother's heart like that. He had never wanted to make him feel like that, never again.

"it's just a break, right?" Sans attempted to reassure him. "we can put the project on hold, then pick up again when you come back …"

"You think I'm coming back from this?" Dings muttered.

Sans' heart ached.

"Why would you want that, anyway?"

"you think i want you to give up?"

"Please. All your rambling about splitting timestreams, even your cute little name, 'Paradox Project.' You've never believed in this. To you, failure would be a relief."

"dings …"

"Wouldn't it?"

"the only relief i'm gonna get outta this is that maybe you'll stop pushing yourself too hard."

Wingdings laughed, then, a pure bell that filled the entire room—a sound Sans had once chased like rainbows after a storm, replaced now with distant thunder. His anxieties only multiplied.

"The entire Underground—the fate of all monsters—rides on this project's success," Dings growled, "and you think I'm pushing myself too hard?"

"when's the last time you got a full night's sleep?" Sans insisted. "when's the last time you left this place, hung out with friends or … or your baby bro? puppy's growin' up real fast, dings …"

"That's a cheap shot."

"i've been noticin' …" Sans took a small, cautious step forward. "you've been sayin' stuff you don' mean to, talking to people who ain't there, or about things that didn't happen. i was sleepin' through it for a while, but last week spooked me wide the fuck awake. i'm terrified you're gonna end up hurting yourself, even more than he …" Sans hesitated, eyeing the cracks running north and south on his brother's bitter face. "than ya already have."

Wingdings didn't say anything for a while, and neither did Sans. Nothing filled their senses but white noise, the subtle sway of the overhead light, the dust faintly stirring in the wake of a breath …

"You don't get it," Dings said so quietly it could only be heard in a room like this. His shaking voice finally broke, and his spirit seemed to follow suit. "Working on this project. Staying preoccupied. Did you ever stop to think that maybe it's the only thing keeping me sane?"

The words cut through Sans like a Real Knife. His heart dropped to his feet.

"You say you're terrified." Tears were gathering, clinging fast to the bottom edges of Wingdings' eye sockets. "You have no fucking idea. Not knowing what's real, losing control of your own head, it's …"

The water fell as he tried and failed to calmly explain his feelings. His voice quavered in time with his shoulders as he spoke.

"I don't sleep," he said. "because it leaves my mind open. I don't … hang out with friends, because I can't stand to let them know what's happening to me. I don't want to see the pup because I'm worried I'll mess up, like … like that time Dad left us in Waterfall, when he thought Mom was watching us but we sure as hell know what side of the barrier she chose."

Sans found himself struggling to keep his own tears inside.

"My imagination is a maze with no exit," Dings went on, "but science … science is a straight path, a constant. It's pure truth. When I'm working on a project like this, I don't have to worry as much. It's … it's getting harder to focus, but at least I can keep my feet on the ground for the most part. Or at least I could." The white-hot energy in his eyes met Sans' like polarized stars. "You've just taken away gravity."

Sans trembled in his untied sneakers and filthy lab coat. "dings," he said, "i'm sorry."

Wingdings took off his glasses and dried his face on the interior of his black argyle sweater. He cleaned his lenses on the soft material of the white button-up underneath, slowly, stalling for composure. He ambled toward the door.

"Yeah." The royal scientist balanced his glasses on the bridge of his nasal bone. "So am I."

The door shut behind him. The sound of it felt to cut the strings that tethered their kites together, leaving them to fly apart in stormy skies. Sans lowered the umbrella he had held over his heart. For longer than he wanted but shorter than he needed, he remained there alone.

When Sans finally emerged with damp sleeves and blue-flushed eye sockets, he found Alphys waiting for him outside. How she had known to find him there was beyond him, but she had always been observant. The dinosaur scientist took one look at him and pulled him into a hug.

At first, Sans considered leaving, but his worries kept him there late, troubleshooting alongside everyone else. When time came to pick up Papyrus from the babysitter, Alphys offered to handle the task, even to look after him through the night.

"no, you should stay," Sans had argued at first. "boss doesn't even want me here."

"Did he t-tell you that?" Alphys had asked. "I'm just an intern. I'm not a lot of g-good at this point, but he n-n-needs you. You wanted to m-make it up to him, right?"

As time wore on into night and into day again, despite his fears, Sans couldn't help feeling pride in his coworkers. Every essential team member had stayed behind, even most helpers and associate staff. By the time morning had rolled around, the machine had been polished and fitted with a fully functional build, just as Wingdings had wanted.

While the rest of the team readied to test with a few last-minute precautions and adjustments, Wingdings stood before the machine, inputting code and key phrases into the keyboard below the monitor. Sans approached him cautiously, tensely, afraid to meet his eyes—but this time Dings did not avoid him. He faced him as if it were any other day: no longer angry, no longer upset, only tired.

"Hey," he said.

"hey." Sans mirrored his somber tone. He stalled just a moment, messing with a loose string in his pocket. "how … how're you …"

Though Sans had chosen to abandon this question, Wingdings understood. His eyes softened.

"you sure about this?" Sans asked instead.

Wingdings sighed with some exasperation. "I'd better be. Can you imagine how pissed Burns Flamesman would be if I pulled the plug now?"

"yeah, that guy's a hothead."

Dings snorted into his hand involuntarily, and at that Sans couldn't help smiling.

"could say he's a little hot under the collar."

"Snuff it. He might hear you," Wingdings snickered. "His ears are probably burning right now."

They both snuck a peek over their shoulders at the small, unassuming fire elemental, who at first failed to meet their gaze. When finally he did, the two spun back and devolved into snickers and snorts of poorly subdued laughter. Flamesman rolled his eyes.

"listen, uh …" As Sans stared at the machine, his smile slowly fell. "after this is over, can we … could we talk? no bullshit, just say what we want to say and …" He chewed on his words reluctantly, his heart sinking yet again. "figure this out."

Wingdings considered him a long, painful moment. The longer it took, the more hope Sans lost.

"I don't know," Wingdings finally answered through a clear stitch in his chest. "Maybe after I've had some time …"

"s'fine," Sans said. It wasn't fine. "take all the time ya need."

He retreated to what he deemed a safe, comfortable distance from both his brother and his colleagues. He picked out a poster across the room and distracted himself reading the equations. How he wished Alphys were there.

Wingdings watched him with only slight delay before resuming his task, though more guiltily than before.

After a few more tweaks and a quadruple-check that everything was in its proper place, the royal scientist flipped the starter switch. To everyone's delight, the machine began to hum.

"Thanks, team," Dings said with a tired smile. "I know it wasn't fair of me to ask in the first place, but … here we are. You've done incredible work."

On a small table before the temporal flux manipulator rested what they had chosen as their test subject: a small, empty birdcage. If the machine worked as expected, this symbol's timeline would be isolated and wiped from the world with no effect on the timelines surrounding it.

Wingdings input the proper specifications, adjusted a dial or two, and tapped a few buttons. He rested his hand on the main lever and took a deep, deep breath.

"Here go the last five years of our lives," he announced with a grin. Then, to himself, "No pressure."

The lever clicked down into place with a satisfying "ka-chunk." As power accumulated, a string of bulbs lit upward along the shell, one by one. Science and magic together encased the birdcage with webs of light. While Sans and his coworkers shielded their eyes from the intensifying brilliance, Wingdings looked directly into it, determined not to miss a single thing. By the time the light faded, the machine had entered cooldown and the cage had vanished.

Sans could not be sure what had just happened. He knew the machine had been run, but he could not recall what they had disappeared, or if they had even remembered to put something there. He knew they would not have forgotten such a paramount component, and the machine could not truly run without a target. He held his spinning head in one hand.

After many confused glances among the team, Wingdings finally spoke up.

"If I had to guess … it worked," he said, beaming. "Interesting, though. Does anyone remember what we put there?"

No one answered. They couldn't.

Sans met his brother's eye uneasily, more unsettled than he had already been to start. Though he had theorized this reaction among countless others, something about it didn't feel right. If removing an item as small and meaningless as a birdcage was this disorienting, how much worse would it be to wipe the timeline of something as significant as the barrier? Was that something they were willing to risk?

"I'm sure it'll be easier to talk about here in a minute," said the royal scientist. He initiated the proper sequence to restore the timeline to its previous state and pushed up on the lever with another satisfying "ka-chunk" … but the machine failed to respond. He frowned and double-checked the configurations. They were all correct.

Before anyone could say a word, a cracking sound tore through the room. The table that had once held a birdcage split down the middle—or at least their perception of it did. It shifted and shook, quivering between states of existence and nonexistence. Watching it was dangerous; Sans could feel his mind short-circuiting in the split second he had allowed himself to look.

A furious string of messages cascaded down the monitor at breakneck speed. Dings' eyes darted over them, struggling to keep up. With every random line he managed to catch, his eye sockets widened further. He abandoned the time-turner and crept nearer to the now empty, fragmenting table, for a rare moment at a loss. What had begun as a crack soon became a gash, eating reality around it in a slowly expanding circle like unraveling cloth. He glanced at his team to verify that this was indeed not a hallucination.

Sans looked down. Lingering dust and debris were sweeping past his ankles as to a strong magnet, and the floor had begun to spiderweb with tiny fissures. A light gathered in the atmosphere around him, faint at first but gaining intensity. All spread inward toward the table and his brother like a closing ring, in toward the vacuum in time they had just created.

Sans lifted desperate eyes to his brother, only to find Dings had already done the same. Sans had never seen an expression so horrified, so hopeless. They both knew what was about to happen. They both knew they didn't stand a chance.

Sans' feet sought traction in the earth; his knees bent, ready to run to him, to protect him, even if that meant diving straight into the eye of the storm … but he didn't get that far.

Time might have stopped or not at all. To Sans, it felt like slow motion as the forming ribcage of a skeletal dragon enclosed around him. Its bones ensnared him like a venus fly trap, cutting short a split-second glimpse of his brother's eyes alight in azure blue. Its wings folded around him in another protective layer, and then another behind its great antlered skull pressed flat to the ground … just in time.

A single explosion burst outward from the test site with a cacophonous roar. Half the floor crumpled back as if made of cardboard. Posters tore clean off the wall, including the one he had been reading just moments before. Through gaps in the bone around him, Sans watched with horror as his coworkers were swallowed in a flash of bright white so instantaneous it took him moments later to process what had happened. They didn't even have time to scream before disintegrating into sheets of dust and then … nothing. Even the bones of his brother's dragon around him dematerialized down to its ribs and wings, and in the aftermath, they too splintered away into ash.

Shaking and dazed on his hands and knees, Sans almost puked, but there was nothing inside him to expel. His tympanic cavity rang with a piercing, high-pitched bell like a Tibetan singing bowl, as if the zen might calm him.

He had seen death before. When the humans had come for his family, he had watched monster upon monster fall around him before spared by the blindfold of his father's arm. This wasn't the same. He had never watched someone die so horribly, so quickly, but … who were they? Friends? Strangers? And who was this person he missed now, someone who refused to leave his head, the most important someone at the center of it all?

A distorted scream overshadowed every question he might have had. It emanated from the wild, undulating sphere of brilliance dancing at the lab's center, where the table had once stood, where the blast had originated. That was where he had stood, eyes bright with magic …

Sans rushed through his vertigo into the storm among floating debris, among pieces of the machine hovering through a strange red fluid he didn't recognize. The closer he came, the clearer his memories, until he began piecing together who it was his soul wouldn't allow him to abandon.

He needed to save him. Step. His best friend. Step. His little brother. Step.

Wingdings.

"dings!" he shouted into the chaos. "dings, c-can you hear me?"

The muffled screaming only continued. Sans looked desperately around him for any tool he could use, a beam or table leg or anything to extend inside the portal, but everything within reach had either broken away or dematerialized.

He braced himself, then reached into the raging light. At first, he recoiled, doubled back in pain—but his hand was still there. His hand was still capable. He reached inside again, and this time, he pushed forward. It burned to the touch—twice as hot as fire, stripping the life energy from his very soul—but he didn't care. His brother's voice was screaming out to him and he would die before letting it continue.

His vision tunneled. He had made it deep enough to submerge his entire right arm, up to his shoulder and the side of his face. The raw, unstable energy twisted around him like a cyclone, resisting him on one side, drawing him deeper on the other. He worried he might split in two before standing a chance of succeeding, but when finally he looked into the abyss … he found him.

Just past the brink of this new rift in time, his brother's form drifted deeper and deeper into the darkness, melting amid a wash of red that had followed after him. His face was softening into something reminiscent of a theater mask, his hands smoothing into gloves. By now, he had stopped screaming. His mind had stolen away, lost in an ocean of pain and frightful discombobulation.

If Sans had known he was destined to fail, if he had known this would be the last thing his right eye ever saw, he never would have gone this far. This horrible image would haunt him for the rest of his life. He knew it even then.

"dings," Sans called, though faintly.

Wingdings heard him. He lifted his head, and though horror painted his morphing face to see his brother there, a flicker of hope lit his eyes. He extended his hand.

They just weren't close enough.

Their fingers were inches away, but the closer Sans came, the farther in his brother seemed to fall. Sans stretched out to him more and more, desperate, tears flying to be lost and forgotten in the darkness … but he wasn't made of metal. Before long, his right eye lost sight; his mind lost focus; his arm lost strength. His body couldn't stand to teeter on the edge between reality and the void. He had to choose one or the other. As his mind slowly surrendered power, he lost the privilege of making that decision. His instincts tore him back from his brother, safe onto the side of survival.

As he collapsed backward onto the cold lab floor, Sans blacked out only long enough for the rift to close behind him. A thin line still tore through reality like a cracked mirror, shivering, hungry to spread wider at the slightest touch. He lay there dazed, panting, panicking, trembling more than the floor beneath him. Once able, Sans dragged himself to his knees. He pinned his useless right arm to his side with the other hand. He blinked, adjusting to the loss of vision in his right socket. He stared at a portal no longer there.

Only one hope remained. His left eye scanned the room urgently and found it crumpled at the far wall: the machine. He scrambled forward, staggering serpentine behind a swimming head. He forced those remnants of an invention upright, though he barely managed the same for himself. If he could just initiate the reversal sequence …

No plug-ins. No power source. He reconnected a few wires and struggled to get it running with his own magic but, as he should have expected, it did not respond. He mashed buttons, kicked it, flipped the lever even though he knew it wouldn't do a damn thing, back and forth and back again.

In his desperation, he hardly noticed more debris running past his ankles. New cracks were tearing home through the ground, inward to the rift. As he saw light gathering overhead, the destruction mounting all over again exactly as it had only moments ago, he knew he owned only seconds before following the same path as his colleagues.

But he refused.

He couldn't die yet, not when he was the only one left who might fix this. As he clung fast to the broken time-turner, forehead pressed to the cracked monitor, he wished with all his heart for another chance, to survive, to be safe outside the reach of this newborn god of death.

His insides reeled, and before he understood what had happened, he had been spat out onto the hallway floor outside. The machine crashed down beside him among a loose pile of ash and debris. Not seconds later, a resounding blast shook the corridor walls, a frightening reminder of what would have destroyed him if he hadn't just … had he just teleported?

After that, Sans simply lay there. He stared at the ceiling emptily, listening to the cycle of explosions that slowly lost strength and frequency. The floor vibrated underneath him, harsh at first but softer with every burst. Once they had finally faded away to silence, nothing but his thoughts remained.

Tears pooled in his eye sockets until they flooded over. His chest heaved. His hands shook and clattered against the ceramic floor. He had lost him. He had really lost him. One moment his brother had been there, smiling with anticipation, and the next … How could he have been so selfish to take back his hand like that? How could he have left him there in such misery, dying in the deep dark alone? It should have been him. All of this was his fault.

He slowly, tremblingly found his feet. There was no time to grieve, not yet. Alphys was on her way back from Papyrus' playschool by then and he needed to warn her. He needed to get to the elevat—he was in the elevator. Sans looked wildly around with his one good eye and collapsed dizzily to lean against the wall. Though he questioned it at first, he had unmistakably felt the world shifting around him. He had done it again, this … shortcut.

As he rode the lift upward, he stared down his reflection in the glossy metal doors. His right eye had been snuffed out, but if he focused his magic, a faux pupil lit easily in its hollows. In time, summoning that useless little speck of light would become second nature. His right arm trembled, filled with pins and needles as he forced it into his lab coat pocket. He had never felt so simultaneously weak and immensely powerful in his life. His magic might as well have been off the charts, but his body felt just shy of dusting …

The elevator chimed. The doors split, and he realized too late he had been leaning against them. He stumbled out onto the upper level and straight into Alphys.

She yelped but caught him the best she could. His weight dragged her to her knees, and on the floor again he gawked up at her. He spun his eyes around, wondering if he had once more jumped through time-space, but it was only serendipity that had brought them together.

"alph," he said urgently. "al, don't go down there …"

"S-Sans, what's going on?" she asked.

"the experiment. it went wrong. wingdings, everyone … th-they didn't make it. wingdings didn't make it. d-dings is …"

"C-calm down." She stared intently, her face overflowing with concern and confusion. She hesitated a moment before her uncertainty won through. "Wh-what experiment are you t-t-talking about?" she asked. "Who … who's Wingdings?"

Upon hearing these words, everything that had happened, everything he had just lost and left behind, all crashed down on him at once. His brother, his friends … they hadn't just been torn from his arms. The machine had torn them from the universe itself, exactly as it was designed to do. No one would mourn them; no one would even remember. His eyes darkened. His soul lost determination.

Was he doomed to forget too?

He woke in the hospital a day later, half blind, weakened in his right arm, diminished to one maximum HP. His friends and colleagues had been wiped from the universe. His brother had been trapped, most likely dead in the void between time and space. And yet here he lay, alive, the sole survivor of a horror unlike any the world had seen. The plain white tiles of the ceiling overhead lent him no distraction. His tears rose again to spill rivers down his face. Why did it have to be him?

He thought he had been alone, but after a few moments of grief, he felt a small hand pat the top of his head. The breath caught in his throat, and a new ache sprang to life in his chest. He turned. Hiding in his right-hand blind spot sat someone more necessary to him than the magic running through his bones.

Papyrus.

His brother was so small, then, so precious, a whole lifetime of greatness waiting eagerly ahead of him. Papyrus smiled his toothy smile, confused but empathetic just the same. Sans' misery both grew and dulled in that moment. Papyrus would never know what he had lost … but maybe for a child, it was better to forget.

Sans returned his grin and would never let it fall for him again. Just setting eyes on such a sweet, unassuming face, he knew without question what was most important and what he needed to do.

As soon as he could walk again, Sans wasted no time leaving that burning wasteland. He took Papyrus with him, away from the Core, the lab, the kingdom. He took him as far away as he could from the worst day of his life, deep into the middle of rural nowhere among snowy pine forests and soft bunny folk. Nothing ever happened there. There, he could protect the last light of his life, the only thing that mattered. He would do better this time.

Later, he returned for what remained of the machine and any research he could salvage. He sealed away the button to the true True Lab behind a loose sheet of metal, soldered convincingly into the wall just like any other panel. Among the papers, he had found a picture in his brother's desk, a drawing Papyrus had scrawled of the three of them together. He pocketed the image and, once home, added a message, a reminder, an oath.

"don't forget."

The longer Sans floated in this nothing world, the more it became something instead. What began as a faint light in every direction gained more and more strength to reveal a scenery. Soon, gravity pulled at his back with increasing weight until he landed on his feet. He staggered upright. His awestruck eyes swept the room. He had ended up exactly where he left off except … not at all.

This world was painted in gray.

NOTES

I've been looking forward to this chapter since I started writing the whole fic, and now it's here! I hope you liked it. I'm revved up for the next chapter, and I know I say this a lot, but hopefully it won't take me that long to pump it out. This one was a doozy, and work's been a little hectic lately. I still stick by what I've said before about updating at minimum once a month, so there's that faint consolation.

If you have thoughts or feelings, I love hearing them! Thank you for reading!

Next time: Welcome to the void, Sans.