You screamed.

As if that could change anything, as if he would return to life if you stomped your foot hard enough. Your voice shook the walls of your lungs, of your throat, of the broken lab, but it could not shake him back together again. Those vanished specks of dust could not hear you. No one could. Sans was gone, dead, shattered into a million pieces as he had been more than thirty times before. You had blocked his path then, just as he had done for you now.

Your hands covered your mouth, but your auburn eyes bore into the rift after him. It had grown thinner, tight-lipped in satisfaction of a full meal. The power to undo time, the power to force the world backward to the start of your journey, churned in its belly beyond reach. In the worst possible way, Sans had just proven that chasing it meant death.

You curled over your knees and pressed your forehead to the cold, broken floor. Why did you care? This person you had been pretending to be, Frisk, didn't exist anymore. Your new memories had devoured them, just as the rift had devoured Sans. You were Chara, the black cat, feasting on the good luck of everyone around you. You were the demon, the darkness, the destroyer of all things. Sans' fall was just another thread in a fabric of victims you had been weaving all your life. Why should this change anything?

You sank to lie there, defeated, reduced to the worst version of yourself you had ever known.

Sans felt as if he were standing under a spotlight. Though this gray mirror appeared to be the test area he had left behind, he noticed that the walls and ceiling had been replaced with inky darkness. The floors frayed into infinity like the ends of poorly cut cloth. The coldness of that emptiness bit him even from there.

He gazed, slack-jawed, to where the rift had once split reality like a crazed smile. Though its scars on the room remained intact, the rift itself had disappeared. Not even a flutter of air led him to believe it invisibly taunted him above the caldera. He reached a hand into the empty air. Going back seemed impossible.

A small table stood undisturbed at the crater's center. The flooring around it had been perfectly preserved, unharmed, hovering as if in its own bubble of existence. Sans' eye sockets widened. It was the same table they had used to uphold their test subject so many years ago, although the birdcage itself was nowhere to be seen. He looked down past the lip of the shallow basin, debating a closer look.

At that moment, the sound of your scream startled him amid perfect silence. It echoed down into the pit of his ribcage. He whipped around. There you were, exactly where he had left you. You knelt with your hands to your mouth, staring through him toward the invisible rift. He neared you cautiously, eyes perfect circles.

"kid?" he muttered.

You did not notice him. He watched you bend to the floor, shaking, your forehead to the gray tiles. As he reached a hand to touch your back, his fingers fell through.

That's right, he remembered. It must have looked like he fell. He too thought he had collapsed into the void as nothing more than insentient dust. Instead, here he stood, retaining all form, intellect, and, for some reason, color. He reached under his shirt and found his ribcage restored, as if his clock had rewound a day or so. He supposed the rift could do anything it pleased, but … the whole thing felt too fortuitous.

"sorry, bud," he sighed, though he doubted you could hear him. "fucked it all right up, didn't i?"

A distant yip tore through the silence like a match on its striker. Past you, in the shadow of the hallway, a small white dog peered out at him.

"huh." Sans tilted his head. "how'd you get here?"

Its tail only wagged. It barked again and spun a playful circle, tongue flicking with excited spittle.

Though confused to find the Annoying Dog here of all places, Sans interpreted it as a sign of hope. The dog had always been fond of his brother—probably because Wingdings had been rather fond of it in return. Ever since young Dings had rescued it from the dump as a puppy, it had clung to their household like glue. Sans often found the small white marshmallow curled in his brother's lap during long research nights or clinging to his heels as he walked errands through New Home. Now that he considered it, they had been nearly inseparable.

The dog pranced back and forth then dropped so that its rear protruded skyward, wiggling in the air. Sans quickly understood the invitation to follow.

He turned his eyes to you and forced his soul to still. Though he wanted more than anything to remain by your side, the truth was that he had already left it. It was bittersweet to think that you might remember him. In saving you, he had doomed you to the same ghosts that had haunted him all his life.

He left you a final time.

As he stepped away, the ground under his feet flipped and folded like grasping, interlocking fingers to form another room, and yet another, and another. In a matter of seconds, he and his guide had walked from the deepest recesses of the True Lab into the bright caverns of Hotland. The sudden transitions confused him at first, but he continued to trek forward, following the Annoying Dog's confident lead through changing shadow puppets.

The farther away from the lab he journeyed, the tighter these walls of total darkness seemed to close. The gray world splintered off into the vacuum like sand on asphalt. Patches of void bled through. He had stepped accidentally into one of these puddles as he passed, and immediately regretted it.

The dark spot had been frighteningly, frighteningly cold, an impressive statement from one who could sleep under several blankets of snow nonplussed. It was no exaggeration to say it felt like landing on the farthest planet of a dying sun. His foot numbed. He couldn't move so much as his big toe before yanking his leg away. It took several painstaking moments for his leg to flare back to life, flooded with pins and needles like a trickling rain stick. He took great care to avoid so much as a shadow after that.

Past the slowly dying flames of Undyne's home, past the maze of bridges, past the lakes and waterfalls and eerily silent echo flowers, the dog finally folded away from him into a dimension beyond reach. His soul dropped. It wouldn't be unlike the Annoying Dog to lead him on a wild goose chase—or, he supposed, a wild dog chase. After spinning circles, searching for even the tip of its tail, he realized he stood alone outside a gray replica of his own house.

Faint vibrations in the air turned his head toward the mailboxes. If he looked hard enough, he could see Undyne and Papyrus in the snow outside, hurling increasingly competitive snowballs at each other. Strange that his vision of you had been so clear when theirs was so faint. He couldn't hear what they said, only the echoes of what might have been shouts and laughter. He reached out a hand. Just as before, it only phased through.

Then, he heard something else: the faint, high-octave hum of metal on metal, like rusty hinges, like a park swing swaying slowly in the wind. He tracked the sound behind his home, between the trees, to what was left of the snowy river bank. On the brink sat a figure in black and white, facing where the gray sky shattered into darkness like broken glass. A birdcage rested on his lap, the same that no one remembered. He swung its door idly open and closed, listening to the monotony of its soft cries as if pretending a bird sang captive inside.

Sans couldn't breathe. His spine shook until his bones rattled, though smothered in the fabric of his clothes. He touched a hand to the black bark of the pine beside him. The void felt to encroach on his meager magic.

Wingdings.

The longer you knelt beside the rift, the less you felt rejuvenated, the more you sensed your strength begin to wane. You wondered if you lingered here long enough, would it take back what was given to you? Your mind, your soul, your life? Would it matter, if you let it have you?

You clenched your fist over the dust and rubble on the floor. No. You couldn't die. Not yet. Not here.

You walked hollowly back the way you had come. The hallway's inconsistency no longer bothered you. You would likely get there eventually, and it wouldn't matter if you didn't.

You found the elevator doors, and the moment they closed behind you, the power went out. Your stomach balled and somersaulted as a sickeningly familiar voice hissed as volatile as a gas leak through the air. It had contacted you through your phone in the past, but you didn't have that this time. More than a hundred tries had come and gone since it took you off guard, but this time was different. By now you had come to know it was Flowey.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Give it a rest, hyperdeath," you interrupted, voice as cold and sharp as ice.

You could hear his roots coiling around the elevator box. He didn't answer you for a while but didn't raise the lift either. You stood in silence and darkness, only waiting.

"So," he lilted in his usual, cheery falsetto, "you've finally snapped out of it, huh, Chara?"

You didn't respond.

"I knew it was you," he sneered. "Idiot. You can't fool me."

"Sure fooled myself for a while."

"You can't run away, either," his voice echoed through what might soon become a metal coffin. "Can't abandon me, like you did in the Ruins. This is it. Without the power to reset, I've already won. The world is going to end and there's nothing you can do about it."

"But I don't have to do anything," you said with a disparaging smile. Your auburn eyes caught a sliver of light in the door to burn red. "All I have to do is stand back and watch you fail. Even if you somehow managed to get everyone's souls, you don't have what it takes. You never have."

Flowey huffed bitterly. "You always underestimate me."

"Underestimate?" you laughed. "If anything, I've overestimated you. When we left through the barrier, you were the one who got cold feet. When I lent you my power to reset, you wasted it. When you tried to take back my soul in the Ruins, you lost to a single fireball. You're weak. You'll fail at this now, just like I've watched you do before, over and over and over."

"Whatever. If you're trying to psyche me out, it's not going to work. There's no way this can fail."

"Then why are we still here?" you asked calmly, quietly.

The part of you that was still Frisk cowered inside. You didn't speak to people like this. You were better than that. You stared hollowly into this reflection you now recognized. It was you, but …

"So you're better off on your own, without me," Flowey sneered. "You've always been like that. Leaving me out of your games. I was never good enough for you."

Your heart stung with a unique pain you hadn't felt in years.

"Is that why he's not here?" The glee in Flowey's voice returned. "Not-as-smiley trashbag was more pitiful and worthless than I ever was. I bet you threw him into the dump where he belongs. Or did he give the noose another go?"

Your chest felt tight all over again, not only with sadness but with self-loathing. You felt a million fingers pointing at you from beyond the walls of your suspended prison. The emotions pulled inward on you like a black hole, demanding you sink into yourself all over again.

"He did, didn't he?" He burst out laughing. "Boy, I can't wait to tell the Flowey Fan Club. Just imagine the look on Papyrus' face when I tell him how you dragged his brother into the dirt, pushing and shoving him until he just couldn't take it anymore. Do you think he'll cry? Do you think he'll be angry?"

Memories of the promise you had made Papyrus, that you would look out for Sans, that you would ensure his survival, drove your heart like a stake into the ground. You pinched your thigh in exchange for empty eyes. You wouldn't let Flowey see he had succeeded in hurting you.

"Are you done?" you asked.

"Oh, no, not even close," jeered the flower. "I haven't even turned the key."

You felt the elevator shudder just a little, enough to throw you off balance.

"See you soon," he said, "Chara."

Sans gazed at the figure's back. After all this time, after decades of grief and denial and efforts to both pull him back and let him go, here Wingdings sat. The once royal scientist stared straight ahead into the nothingness, eyes wide and empty as if to match their darkness. They had been lost in the repetition of the waves, rising in a half-hearted attempt to touch the sky before dying in the abyss. He muttered incoherently under his breath.

"dings," Sans whimpered.

Wingdings stopped speaking but did not acknowledge him. His hold of the birdcage strengthened until his melted hands began to tremble. His shoulders squared.

Fearful of what he might find, Sans inched around to the riverbank. He peered carefully into his brother's eye sockets, breath bated. Just as he had seen on the day he lost him, his face had been smoothed into something of a mask. The lights of his eyes had run away and left his face stoic, as if his mind wandered somewhere else entirely.

A glow emitted from the birdcage in his lap. Inside, a small, bright monster soul spun in slow revolution like a music box ballerina. The moment his eyes landed on it, Sans blanched in horror from ivory to white. He forced his wet eyes again to his brother's.

"dings, i …"

"Go away," he said flatly.

Sans fidgeted under a tight brow, taken aback. "i-i thought …"

"Go away," Dings said again, more firmly. "You're not real. None of this is real."

San's soul spun like the birdcage's captive to understand what was happening.

"n-no, that ain't it, bro," he said. He crouched down in front of him and smiled meagerly. "it's me. really. 'm here."

Wingdings began to laugh. Though it began quietly, it quickly rolled into a deeper, madder, painful hysteria. Sans' worries reached new heights.

"You'd never be stupid enough to come here," the scientist bit.

"dings."

"Shut up."

The ground fell away into the yawning mastodon jaws of the void. Pure darkness surrounded them both, with no trace of the world they had left behind. That numbing coldness Sans had previously encountered enveloped him as if thrown naked into the Antarctic. He could feel it eating away at him, slowly paralyzing him from head to toe. He gasped.

"All these timelines are protected," Wingdings barked. "Every single one."

Faint lines wove away from Wingdings' soul in a hundred directions, cutting through the darkness like a spider's web. Though the rest spun miles away to be lost in the dark, one of them strung to the soul inside the birdcage, which had left his arms to hover free. Another, brighter than the others, led directly to Sans. It was this one Wingdings took into his hands.

"I would feel it," he snarled. "I would know if …"

Wingdings trailed off incoherently. His angered face softened with confusion. He stared at the line in his hands and where it led. His body shook like a railcar losing grip of the track. He began muttering again, very quietly.

Sans could feel his magic dying. He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. With what little strength he still controlled, he extended his hands to his brother's face. To be touched, Wingdings stiffened, and the lights of his eyes finally sparked back to life. They raced up and down Sans' body, shocked, even horrified, but more than anything, lucid. Never had a hallucination felt so solid.

The gray world folded back into place beneath them, from the river to the house and the streets of Snowdin past them. The birdcage plummeted to the ground and rolled away, the soul inside unharmed in a bubble of antigravity. Sans coughed and cursed. His hands fell to Wingdings' shoulders, and he struggled a moment to catch his breath. Every part of him felt on fire.

Dings stared breathlessly down at Sans, who hung from his collar like a scarf. He lifted a hesitant hand to his brother's indigo blue coat sleeve and felt slowly, disbelievingly up its pathway to a cheekbone warm with tears—real, tangible tears.

"Sans?" he said with the voice of one who had realized a long-abandoned hope.

At his brother's long-lost touch, the smaller skeleton's breath halted at his teeth. How much time had passed since he even dreamed of hearing his name in that voice?

"dings?"

Wingdings searched him a moment and then covered his face. "I'm shit to look at, aren't I?"

Sans' heart sank a moment before rising with a bittersweet smile.

"yeah." He pried the curtain of his brother's hands away. "best shit i've seen in a hundred years."

Wingdings sputtered with laughter, despite the water in his eyes.

Sans' heart soared. There it was, his favorite sound in the world, the sound he would have leapt the moon to hear just once. He wrapped his arms around him, and Wingdings melted a second time.

The elevator skyrocketed so quickly it flattened you to the floor. As it crashed to a stop, you launched a few inches into the air, then landed in a heap of tender bruises. You growled an expletive or two and lifted yourself to your feet. You stepped out into the gray stone halls of New Home.

As the elevator doors snapped shut behind you, a rustle of leaves and crunching branches crackled into your ears. You didn't have to look back to know Flowey had coiled his vines around the door, ensuring you remained here to the very end.

He did not have to go to those lengths. You had one last hope to redeem yourself and that hope lay ahead, at the end of Asgore's trident.

As you traveled the balcony walkway overlooking the silver city of New Home, your heart sank to consider your last pleasant moments with Sans, when he had shown you those magic-luminant streets for the first time. That is, the first time for Frisk. You had been to the city several times in the early years, hand in hand with your mother and father and …

You shook these thoughts of family and the tears they threatened to stir. You took a breath and closed your eyes. You would make it through this. You only had to survive until your soul fell into Asgore's hands … or Asriel's. Whatever the outcome, after today, the world could move on and do what it pleased without you. You refused to destroy anyone else's life. Nothing would be your fault anymore.

Fighting your nostalgia became impossible as you reached the doorstep of Asgore's home, what had once been your home after a short stay in the Ruins. The Core had been completed only a month or two after your fall, and with New Home's finished construction, the royal family had been preparing to make the move from that ruinous old haven to a better place. You had made the exodus alongside them. You remembered how Toriel had commented that, if only you had fallen sooner, they might have planned for your own room. At the time, you would have to share.

You stared into your old bedroom. Two beds flanked the walls: yours to the left, Asriel's to the right. The toys he had once played with remained beside his bed exactly where he had left them, along with macaroni pictures on the walls and your clothes in the closet. You remembered sharing his sweaters. It was all they had to give you.

Two boxes lay on the floor beside each bed, and you already knew what hid within. So much more than that, you remembered that the chest on the left had belonged to you, and the chest on the right to Asriel.

You went to his first. Inside, you found the heart-shaped locket, gold-plated, inscribed with the phrase, "Best Friends Forever." As Frisk, you had never been able to get it open, but as Chara you remembered that the clasp had been jammed at your fault, and the trick thereafter had been to twist it open at a particular angle.

You hesitated. You weren't ready to see his face. You weren't ready to see your own. Nevertheless, you stared down at a heart-enshrined photo, a record of a carefree, happy life that no longer existed. A life you had ruined. A life you realized too late you should have cherished.

You touched the aged, sepia image of Asriel's beaming face. The camera that had taken this photo had been brand new at the time, but had fallen broken into the dump. Reconstructing it had been no problem for that shy, quirky skeleton man, the one who only came by to talk science and drop clues about the chocolate he had hidden for you around the cozy castle … oh. That was him, wasn't it? That was Sans' brother. You had not spoken much, but he had always smiled at you, even if behind a shadow of unease. You recognized that smile now, distorted in a gray room in Waterfall.

As you stared at the photograph, you understood how Sans must have felt, losing his brother. Both Wingdings and Asriel had been caught in a Limbo each their own, well beyond the reach of helping hands. Sans had been naive to think he could save him, just as you had been naive to think you could save Asriel. You couldn't save anyone. It was in your human nature to destroy. Try as you might, you would only fail to save him, just as you had failed to save Sans.

Your eyes drifted to the box on your left. A worn dagger had been trapped within. You considered a hundred different ways to put it to use, but you were brave enough for none of them. You affixed the old locket around your neck and left the knife to rest in its coffin.

"Didn't think you'd come," Wingdings mumbled, muffled in the fur of Sans' hood.

Sans didn't know what to say. After countless years building reunion speeches in his head, now that he had finally arrived, he failed to recall a single word. He simply held on for dear life, afraid the dream would slip away.

"are you … are you mad?" he managed to piece together.

"Oh, definitely, definitely 'mad,'" Dings snickered, "but angry? No."

Though Sans couldn't see his brother's face, he could tell he was smiling. They separated, then, and regarded each other with matching stars for eyes.

The longer Sans observed the damage done to him, the more pain gathered behind his sternum. Beyond the obvious disfigurement, there were circles under his eyes to dwarf his own, discoloration in his bones, and a tremble through his every atom. His voice, too, left him more quietly than he remembered. He seemed haggard, tired, as fragile as a crystal dish balancing on the tip of one finger. In his eyes Sans found the strain of someone who had been tormented by a sight farther than what should be seen. As Wingdings looked at him now, Sans got the sense he also stared far past him.

"if i hadn't …" Sans began.

"I should have listened."

"but if i'd just …"

"It's okay."

"i shouldn't have …"

"It's okay."

"it's not," Sans finally snipped. "will you shut up for a second and let me apologize?"

"No," Dings snapped, just as harshly.

Sans gaped.

"Every day of your life, you've been apologizing to me," said Wingdings. "At this point it's like a fucking bedtime prayer. So, no. I'm done. I won't let you be sorry anymore. It's not your fault."

For a moment, they simply knelt there in silence. Never in all these years had Sans expected this kind of response. He felt empty, confused, and unsure of his emotions. He had been hoping all this time for the chance to beg Wingdings' forgiveness, and now … he wouldn't let him? Sans gazed off into the darkness, which seemed a little closer than before.

"but i gave up," he said hollowly.

Sans felt the snow shift to his right and realized Wingdings had moved to sit beside him. The forgotten scientist wrapped unsteady arms around his long legs and rested his chin between his knees. He kept his mouth shut for a few moments as if gathering his thoughts.

"You're here now," he said finally with a small, encouraging smile.

Sans didn't reply, only listened to the faint sounds of their breathing amid silence. Wingdings watched him closely, even if Sans didn't meet his eyes.

"It's amazing, really," Dings continued faintly. "I don't know if it has to do with your limited exposure, like antibodies from a vaccine, or … or maybe something to do with our unique genetics, but … you're incredibly resistant to this place. I can't even count how many times I saw you cutting through here, taking your shortcuts … never long enough to get a word in …"

Sans felt the beginnings of a memory still out of reach: Wingdings' voice in his head, distorted as if in another language altogether. He remembered drifting through a shortcut to nowhere, his brother reaching out to him, and he had only laughed.

"It didn't happen so quickly for me," said Wingdings. "I was fighting the dark for stars know how long with nothing to ground me." He huffed a small laugh. "Imaginary things start looking pretty solid when up against nothing. Made me think some awful things about myself and … some awful things about you."

Sans' soul sank to the bottom of the pool.

"After a while, my magic mixed with the rift and I found my feet. There was more I could see, more I could do if I wrapped my big bean of a brain around it."

"big baked bean."

Wingdings nudged him playfully, and Sans couldn't help smiling.

"Point is, I was finally able to see. I could push the nothing around me to show … something. A window in, as close to home as I could get." He looked toward where Undyne's shadow had locked Papyrus' in one arm and noogied the skeleton with the other. Then, his eyes drifted down into a basement hidden below. "I could finally see past the hallucinations into what had really happened, what it'd … really done to you."

Sans continued to watch the edge of the world, where flecks and pieces of gray fringe peeled off and floated away into emptiness. They sat in silence a moment, each distracted by their own thoughts.

"I've never been more relieved," said Wingdings finally, "than the day you gave up on that stupid metal box."

Sans turned to him, then, his brow bone contorted like the mushroom maze in Waterfall. An impish smile split the softened contours of Wingdings' face.

"You're too boneheaded to figure it out anyway," he teased.

"heh, thanks."

"Plus I might've … left some things out, when drawing up the plans." Wingdings seemed a little guilty at that.

Sans heaved a breath and lay back flat against the snow. The darkness above sent his stomach reeling in that familiar optical illusion of floating through space as the flurry swam toward him.

"guess none of it really matters anyway," he said, "now that i'm stuck here."

Wingdings hesitated, then reclined to join him. Shoulder to shoulder, they stared into the void, soaking in each other's long-lost companionship. Then, after another precious, precious moment, Dings took a deep, reluctant breath.

"You're not getting off that easily," he sighed.

Your steps fell heavier and heavier as you traversed a hall washed with the gold of stained glass windows. Your heart hammered against your ribs like a prisoner at the bars. As you crept forward below the line of arches, the ghost of a ritual expected someone to step out from behind a stone pillar. The chirping of birds, audible through the barrier above, sang distantly into your ears.

You hoped.

You dreamed.

No one came.

It hit you, then, harder than it had before. No one would ever come to meet you here again. Sans was gone. Really, truly gone. He had watched over you like family, led you by the hand through thick and thin … and you had led him by the hand to ruin. You clutched the locket around your neck so strongly it shook. The floor at your feet darkened in teardrops from yellow to orange.

Who were you anymore? Were you Frisk? Were you Chara? Even though you had finally remembered your name and previous life, you had never felt as unacquainted with yourself. Despite the missing pieces, as Frisk, your confidence could have taken you over mile-wide chasms without a second glance. You had known what to do, what to say, where to go. Now, you questioned everything.

The memory of who you once were and the person you had become fought like ravens over carrion.

As you stared ahead into the empty space of the Last Corridor, for the second time since losing him, tears spilled down your face. You wept into your hands. You wanted Sans. You wanted him to stand there and tell you how you had done, whether this path ahead was the right one, if you were as bad as you thought yourself to be. He would know what to say. He would know what to do. He would rustle your hair and tell you not to worry, that you would figure it out together.

Not anymore. Sans was dead. The journey was over.

You looked through lakes of salt water to the end of the golden hall.

You were going to be free.

"Listen, Sans," said Wingdings. "There's a lot I need to tell you and not a lot of time."

Sans knit his brow and sat up straight. "whaddya mean?"

Wingdings followed suit slowly, wearily. As his hands slipped on the snow, he nearly fell back again, but Sans caught his arm reflexively.

"The rift keeps getting bigger," breathed Dings, upright again. "The barrier helps slow it down, but the human is on their way to Asgore and it's only a matter of time before it breaks again. I'm doing what I can to keep the rupture from bleeding farther into reality, but I'm stretched so thin already … I don't know how much longer I can keep it under my thumb."

Sans noticed very suddenly that the world around them actually was shrinking. Papyrus and Undyne were no longer perceptible outside the house, and the darkness reached nearly to his doorstep. There was no more river. When he looked at his brother again, he realized just how unstable he had become. His eyes wavered; his body shook. He seemed moments away from breaking down.

Wingdings reached out to the birdcage, which still lay on its side just a few feet away, and returned it to his lap. The soul hovered peacefully inside. He stared at it a moment, hesitantly, perhaps a little sadly.

"The rift had begun rewinding the clock for Asriel," Wingdings said, "but he left before reclaiming the most important part." He pressed cage earnestly into Sans' hands. "The cycle won't end if he isn't saved. Either he'll keep playing this game with the human, over and over until we're all swallowed down into the void, or the human resets."

"they won't do that," said Sans a bit defensively, despite your last screaming words to the contrary. "they trashed their time travel."

"They only severed their tie to the Rift, meaning they can still do it if they're determined enough. Resetting isn't something a human inherently does. It's something the Rift does. It listens to their determination. It feeds off it. All it takes is one wish, and then …" Genuine fear flickered on Wingdings' face. "I can't watch you die again."

Sans felt ashamed, suddenly, knowing his brother had been peering through the window, watching him fall prey to his own weakness. The colorless cage in his hands chilled his arms as if he held a block of ice; however, Sans was the one to melt.

"you can't put me first like that," he said.

Wingdings chuckled. "I wish I could say I was, but I'm not," he admitted. "You're the only one who can do this, Sans. If you die, we're screwed sideways. Our best chance is to finish what Chara—Frisk set out to do and hope there's enough time to set this straight."

Chara? The wheels in Sans' head turned. Puzzle pieces fell into place. His hands gripped the metal bars of the cage.

"Take his soul back to him," said Wingdings.

"okay, but how?" Sans asked. "ya act like i can just waltz outta here through the back door, boss monster soul tucked under my arm, no big."

"That's exactly right."

The remaining world of gray flipped and folded underneath them as it had when following the Annoying Dog. The snow disappeared, as did his house and all glimpses of Snowdin. Across him stood a solid gray door with a plain silver knob. It was straightforward; no locks, latches, or peepholes, just a door without complications. Sans stared at it, astonished, then down again at the soul in his hands.

"can it even live long enough to reach him?" he asked.

"I've been holding its timeline together to save it from the void, same as I've done for you. The cage will give me a link to keep it in stasis, as long as you don't let go, so … don't let go. If you do, the cage will fall back into the void and the soul will have only seconds." He sighed and secured the metal door shut, hook in latch. "Even taking it with you, the cage can't actually leave here. No one will notice it. To the rest of the world, it just … doesn't exist anymore."

Sans' heart sank, and so did his eyes. "i take it … you're hanging back, then."

Wingdings didn't answer, but by the look on his face, Sans knew it was true.

Sans stood, birdcage in hand. He held it close to his chest.

"what've i gotta do?"

"Make sure the human lives," said Dings, "then take them to the machine. You can't fix it without them."

"fix it? heh … thought i was 'too boneheaded.'"

Wingdings snickered. "Well, yeah, but … nah, you caught me; that was a ripe josh. You were right about most of it. It should function just fine once you … add what's missing."

Wingdings appeared worried, then.

The longer Sans looked at him, the more these melted deformations of his brother's face and hands reminded him of something else he had seen. His memory called back to the day of the accident, that softening face, contoured in a forgotten splash of red … red like …

"There's a reason you couldn't fix it," Wingdings said shakily, "something I kept secret from you and … everyone."

Sans set his teeth as if to suture them shut. The darkness around them was closing in, and Wingdings trembled as if an earthquake were building pressure inside him. Soon only they, the door, and the patch of gray between them remained. The void crept inward slowly.

"Why could the human turn back time, and not you?" Wingdings asked uneasily. "You were both exposed to the power of the rift. If anything, you should have the stronger connection. So why not you?"

"because …" Sans' soul ached as he began to understand. He stared, wide-eyed with bated breath. The darkness crawled only inches away, now.

"Harnessing the power to turn back time to such an extent takes something special, something only humans have. Not the kind of power found in all humans but … a unique subtype. A red soul."

The void picked at the ground beneath his feet. Sans closed his eyes and muttered, "don't say it, dings."

"The machine runs on determination, Sans. Massive, massive amounts of determination, more than can be safely extracted, more than I had supplied the first time." He took his brother firmly by the shoulders, eyes intense and apologetic. "Sans … you'll have to use their soul."

NOTES

Sorry for the unexpected hiatus! I hope it was worth the wait, at least. :)

So I was polishing up the outline and it looks like there are actually only a few chapters left?! Maybe three more and an epilogue?! They'll be long-ish chapters, though, that's for sure. Don't worry; I haven't cut anything (if anything I've only elaborated). It just turns out I had separated the chapters a little more thinly toward the end of my outline and they worked better together. So instead of 20 chapters, we're looking at more like 17.

Especially since we're nearing the end, I'll do my best to be a little more timely about updates. I'm still finishing up a side gig I took on outside work and once that's out of the way my time should open up a little more.

I hope you enjoyed! If you have thoughts or feelings, I love hearing them. :)

Next Time: *hums Bergentrückung*