Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Gaster was fairly certain most prisoners didn’t have tea and cookies delivered every afternoon.

Of course, most prisoners also didn’t live in the castle, with guards who stayed outside and only bothered him if it was during one of their “inspections,” in a decent-sized suite with a bedroom and a bathroom and, as of a few months ago, a small side room he could use as a lab.

But he couldn’t remember the last time anyone was arrested for any serious crime, something that actually warranted being locked away rather than talking it out and starting some form of rehabilitation program. And he supposed he never should have expected Asgore to throw him in a grungy cell with substandard food and nothing to occupy himself with.

Still. The tea and cookies were rather overdoing it.

As … enjoyable as they were to eat.

On most days, Asgore would clear half an hour out of his afternoon to have tea with him in his “cell.” Sometimes they actually talked. But far more often than not, Asgore did most of the talking, filling Gaster’s persistent silence with updates from the Underground and idle chatter about how his flowers were doing or what interesting new items had been discovered at the garbage dump.

Today, apparently, Asgore was busy, and the guard who dropped off the tea and cookies left without a word. Just because Asgore tried so hard to treat him as if he were still a normal member of society didn’t mean that anyone else did. Gaster wasn’t sure exactly how much information had been released to the general public as to why the Royal Scientist suddenly disappeared from the Underground. But not much was needed.

Enough people had seen him with those two in those brief few weeks they lived with him. And now the gossip had had a full year to spread. Enough people could connect the dots from there.

He knew Asgore would never allow anyone to physically harm him—not that most of them could, but they didn’t know that. He doubted Asgore would even permit any sort of verbal lashing. But he couldn’t stop the glares, the whispers, and most of all, the hard silences from just about everyone else who made contact with him.

In a way, Gaster was glad he didn’t try.

It was strange enough living more like a confined, over-supervised guest than a criminal.

Gaster ate three of the cookies but ignored the tea. Then he returned to his desk to take down more notes for maintenance of the Core, notes he still hadn’t finished. He had been watching over it since its creation, with almost no one else even knowing how it worked, and it seemed that with each problem he sent them a solution for, two more popped up. At least it gave him something productive to do.

When a knock came at the door, he paused, but did not stop. The guards always knocked, and he never answered. A few seconds later, another knock. He ignored that one, too.

Finally, the door opened.

But instead of the familiar clunk of the guard’s boots, or even the heavy padding of Asgore’s feet, Gaster heard shuffling.

Nervous shuffling.

The door closed. Gaster stood, very slowly, and turned around.

Two eyes he knew far too well stared back at him from behind a pair of glasses. Glasses that needed fixing, he noticed—there was a crack on the side of the left lense. And her lab coat was torn, didn’t she know how to sew it up?

Nothing else had changed. Her outfit was the same. Her expression was the same. The way she wrung her hands and shifted her weight from foot to foot was exactly the same.

The way she lifted her hand in a shaky attempt at a wave hadn’t changed a bit.

“... h-hi.”

It had been at least two months since he had heard her speak, but he could never forget that quiet stutter. Even if it was no longer accompanied by her shy smile.

He summoned his magical hands above his head. “Dr. Alphys.”

“Um … yeah,” she muttered, glancing away, then back to him, then away again, as if she couldn’t decide whether or not she wanted to meet his eyes. In a way, that was nothing new. But it had always seemed sweet before. A little annoying at times, but sweet. Endearing. Now it was just uncomfortable. “It’s … been a while.”

Gaster had nothing to say to that, and for almost a minute, they stood there in silence.

“I didn’t think you were interested in visiting me,” he replied at last. She ducked her head, lips pursed. He lifted half his browbone. “I hope you weren’t pressured into it.”

She straightened, blinking for several seconds before she shook her head fast enough to knock her glasses out of place. “No, no, I wa—I wanted to. Come see you. I-if … that’s okay?”

She fidgeted, wringing her hands, and for a second, she looked exactly like that shy young graduate with so much potential and so little idea of where she fit in the world, so little confidence in her own abilities.

So like he had been centuries before.

He looked away.

“I’m in no position to refuse.”

He hadn’t meant it with any malicious intent, but he saw her flinch out of the corner of his eye. “I know, b-but … if you want me to go, I’ll …”

She trailed off, and began to step back. No matter how little power he had now, she would still back away from the slightest hint of disapproval.

Gaster let out a long, heavy breath. “You can stay, Dr. Alphys.”

Alphys stopped and looked at him, but a second later he turned away to focus on his machines. He waited for the pad of footsteps back toward the door. They didn’t come.

After more than two minutes of silence so dense he could have choked on it, she cleared her throat.

“So … h-how have you b-been?”

She seemed to know how silly the question was, wincing as soon as it was out of her mouth, so he resisted the urge to make one of the many sarcastic comments that came to mind.

“As well as can be expected.”

She nodded, an awkward, jerky motion, a hint of red appearing on her cheeks before it vanished a few seconds later. She looked around, apparently for the first time, her sharp eyes taking in every detail: the desk, the computer, the bed and fridge and all the amenities that had made up most of his world for months now. She had her faults, including occasional obliviousness and naivete, but lack of observation had never been one of them.

“You’ve got … I mean … i-it’s nice here,” she said, stumbling over her words several times before she found some that worked. “You have everything you need?”

Gaster nodded again, face blank. “The king has been very generous.”

This didn’t seem to be the sort of answer she was looking for, but she didn’t ask for another one.

“He … he said t-that you got a new lab?” she asked, daring to meet his eyes for more than a few seconds this time.

Gaster simply looked at her for a moment. He could refuse. He had no legal rights—or at least none that he knew about, given that he had never spoken to a lawyer—and if she wanted to, she probably could have forced him. But she wouldn’t. He was free to say no.

Instead, he turned around and made a vague motion with one of his hands for her to follow. She did.

He led her around the corner into the room that had been empty up until a few months before, but had since become so full it was difficult to get around without tripping on a cord or a piece of machinery. Predictably, Alphys tripped over three things in the first ten seconds. Gaster had done the same thing early on, but he had navigated it so often by now that he probably could have done it blindfolded.

“He gave me access to some basic equipment several months ago,” he said, without looking at her. “Mostly to assist in maintaining and improving the Core, but more recently he’s allowed me to continue other research.”

He didn’t need to glance over his shoulder to feel her flinch.

“All strictly supervised, obviously,” he added. She didn’t respond. A few seconds later, he looked at her again, his browbone slightly raised. “I understand you’ve been doing a good deal of work on the Core yourself.”

She stiffened, an anxious giggle slipping out of her throat.

“Oh, um … j-just a little. S-since I can … I mean I … I can go out to see the Core, since I work right there, a-and …”

His browbone raised further. She never had been willing to take full credit for her own work. Certainly, he did a fair bit of essential work on the Core, but the fact remained that it hadn’t exploded after a year of his relative absence, and that said enough on its own.

“Asgore seems very pleased with your work,” he said.

Alphys just fidgeted even more.

“W-well … I …” She looked at him, then just as quickly looked away, her hands wringing so hard she would probably have marks later on. “I mean, I’m not as g-good as you were … I didn’t think he’d a-actually make me Royal Scientist, but I g-guess someone had to do it, and …”

She trailed off. It would have been easy to pretend that she was just nervous around him, just as she had been nervous around him since the first time she showed up in the lab, tripping over loose cords, damaging two important machines, and solving three persistent computer problems in her first day on the job. It would have been easy to pretend they were just two co-workers who chatted and collaborated on projects and watched anime together in the evenings.

But Gaster knew what “nervous” looked like on her face, and this was different. Similar, but different. This was deeper. This was pained and genuine and there was no getting rid of it by making pleasant conversation.

And as easy as it would have been to ignore it, Gaster was done dismissing the truth.

She was afraid of him.

She was hurt, she was betrayed, she was damaged, and she was truly afraid. And there was little, if anything, he could ever do to change that.

And he had caused it. He had become someone deserving of fear. Perhaps he had been someone worthy of fear long before he met her.

You should be scared of me.

He just hadn’t expected to see the results.

Yet despite it all, he couldn’t make himself wish she hadn’t come.

Who would have thought that the awkward, clumsy, slightly irritating, brilliant young doctor he had once loathed to have as his co-worker would end up taking his place?

Who would have thought that he would believe she had earned it?

“H-has Asgore told you much?” she asked, snapping him out of his thoughts. “About how everything’s going?”

“Has much changed?” he replied, his tone as uninterested as ever.

She deflated again with a slight shrug. “N-not really … no new updates, I guess.”

He had known that, of course. Asgore gave him newspapers and kept up up to date with any truly important information, and plenty of unimportant information. His way of “keeping him connected to the rest of monsterkind,” apparently. But it seemed that Alphys was already short on conversation topics.

“Sans and Papyrus are doing well.”

Gaster prided himself in stopping himself from flinching. Especially from something Alphys said, of all things. But sometimes, the bright, nervous monster who had once been like an apprentice to him managed to surprise him enough to completely freeze up, if only for a second. And to this day, he still had no idea whether she did it on purpose.

She looked away before he could properly meet her eyes, hands playing with the hem of her shirt.

“W-well, pretty well … Papyrus is definitely happy, and Sans … he’s doing f-fine,” she finished.

She always told him, even though he had never asked. Even though he had never so much as nodded in response to one of her updates. Maybe she thought that if she kept saying it, eventually, he would start asking questions. Maybe she thought he wanted to know even if he wouldn’t say it.

Sometimes she reminded him far too much of 2—

He squeezed his hands into fists, then forced them to relax. If Alphys noticed, she didn’t say a thing.

After a minute of silence, she cleared her throat.

“So … what have you been working on? N-now that you’ve got more equipment, have you … s-started any new projects?” she asked, a hint of a smile touching her lips. It disappeared as quickly as it appeared, and she looked at the floor again. “Y-you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, it’s j-just …”

She shrugged, so young and helpless still. Something in his SOUL twinged at the sight. He pushed it away before his face could soften.

“You can look around, if you like,” he replied. “I’m more than used to people digging through my research.”

Even if he hadn’t meant it to come out in a bitter tone, he couldn’t quite hide the touch of annoyance in his words and, apparently, in the signing of his hands. Privacy had once been so important to him, even before his final … project. But as much as Asgore tried to give him chances to prove himself, to trust him with things he really shouldn’t be trusted with, he wasn’t stupid. Gaster couldn’t make a baking soda volcano without someone coming in to ensure it wasn’t going to erupt.

Alphys tensed, but apparently curiosity won out over her anxiety, because a few seconds later she scurried forward and began looking over the mechanisms set up around the lab. She never touched anything—despite her clumsiness, she was one of the few people he knew who understood how delicate certain instruments could be—but she leaned in close to examine each and every detail.

A tiny part of him, a very tiny part, wanted to smile. Smile at the same eager expression she had worn in her early days, her thirst for knowledge, her enthusiasm for every little project she worked on. The ease with which she made him forget how unpleasant the rest of his life had become.

He didn’t smile. He just stood and watched.

But he couldn’t help but tense, just a bit, when she stepped up to one of the largest mechanisms, pushed off to the side, a control box with electrodes attached to the front. She bent down to get a closer look.

“I’ve never seen a machine like this before … I mean, I’ve seen similar ones, but not exactly …” She trailed off, and as soon as she looked at him, her brief moment of confident, professional curiosity vanished, and she was right back to the nervous young scientist who questioned every word that came out of her mouth. She motioned toward the machine. “W-what is this for?”

Gaster hesitated. This time, he very genuinely considered not telling her. He couldn’t lie: Alphys could be oblivious, but she was far from stupid. She would figure out he was lying.

And he had been lying to her for far too long, anyway.

He let out a long breath and stared at the opposite wall.

“It … connects to a portion of a monster’s body that has become magically … dead, and delivers pulses of magical energy in an attempt to elicit a response in the monster’s SOUL and rekindle the damaged area.”

One second of silence. Two. Three. Four.

“Oh! T-that’s great! I mean, I’ve never really heard of that happening, b-but I’m sure it has sometimes, and if it d-did it could really help people and—”

She stopped, so abruptedly he actually wondered if she had turned to dust then and there. He turned around. She was still standing there, staring at him, but the awkward grin he could so easily imagine on her face had disappeared.

Behind her crooked glasses, her eyes were wide, and he could see the lights flicking on inside her head.

“His eye,” she breathed, as much to herself as to him.

Gaster stared at the floor. He could feel her straighten.

“I-it’s for … Sans’s eye … i-isn’t it?” she asked, voice tight, still nervous, but far more assured. “You’re … trying to f-fix his eye?”

It wasn’t a question, no matter how it sounded. There was no getting away from it once she had guessed. And she had guessed. Just as easily as she had known that the holes in his hands were far from an accident.

He wondered sometimes, if he hadn’t revealed himself, how long it would have taken her to figure out the truth about … them.

“I already had a version of the machine in my original lab, but was unable to put it to use,” he said at last, because she hadn’t stopped staring at him, because if he let himself keep thinking he wouldn’t like where he ended up. “I have very little work to do here and I don’t like to leave projects unfinished, if I can avoid it. It was extremely simple, I would have finished it months ago if I’d had access to the equipment.”

“Asgore would have given you the equipment right away if you told him what it was for,” she replied, and he jerked his head to face her at the hard, matter-of-fact tone, without a single stutter. Her eyes were the same, intelligent and piercing and that was what he had seen in her, the person he knew she could be from the beginning if she just stopped doubting her own abilities. She sunk a bit under his gaze, but did not look away except to glance at the machine. “Does it work?”

He tried very hard not to take that as an insult. It didn’t work.

“I haven’t had any chance to test it, but I am almost certain it functions perfectly. The only reason the original machine failed was due to a power surge, and I’ve added safeguards against that as well as made further improvements to the design.”

He paused, and a single glance at the growing hope in Alphys’s eyes—so like Asgore’s at every scrap of evidence that he was something other than the heartless creature he had proven himself to be—made him frown.

“But On—Sans made it very clear he has no interest in attempting the procedure.”

“I could talk to him,” she said, so eager, almost desperate, and of course, she had been visiting them regularly, she had gotten to know them, she had gotten attached. “A-and I could talk to Asgore, and Undyne, and we could w-work something out.”

He stared at her, his eyes blank, and she deflated just a bit under his gaze.

“We c-could try, at least,” she went on, forcing her spirits back up with more determination than he had seen in all the time he had known her. She looked at him, really looked at him, searching for something he doubted she would find. “Would you do it? I-if … if he says yes?”

Gaster pressed his teeth together, but managed to avoid looking away. For almost a minute, they held one another’s gazes, Gaster waiting for the moment she gave in.

She didn’t.

She held his eyes until he found himself glancing to the side on reflex, and when he looked back, there was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips.

And even when he stared at her again, as cold and hard as ever, it refused to fade.

“I’ll l-let you know, okay?” She took a step back, though he wasn’t sure whether it was out of eagerness to get to something or just to get away from him. But before she moved again, she paused. “D-do … is there anything I can b-bring you when I come back?”

Gaster turned back to his lab, though there was nothing in particular that drew his interest. “No, thank you.”

She hesitated again.

“O-okay.”

He could see her watching him out of the corner of his eye, see her opening her mouth and closing it, as if she wanted to say something else but couldn’t figure out what, or how. Then she turned and scurried away down the hall, out through the door that locked shut behind her.

Gaster stood there for a long time, looking at nothing, his head as full and as empty as it had ever been.

The cell had never seemed quite so silent.

Chapter Text

Alphys hated Snowdin.

Not that she had anything against the people, or the buildings or the “small town culture” or even the gorgeous scenery. But no matter how much she bundled herself up, she remained a lizard monster. While everyone else was sweltering in Hotland, she was dozing in the heat.

And while most monsters could at least tolerate freezing temperatures, Alphys, quite frankly, felt like she was going to fall over and die with every step.

But she kept going, just as she had done at least once a week—and usually three or four times a week—for the past year. She trudged through the wind and the snow with her thickest coat and hat and gloves and scarf and boots, toward the center of town, with the shop and the inn sitting side by side. She kept going, because as usual, the destination was worth it.

As her eyes fell on the splotches of red and blue standing in the snow near the front door, she was reminded exactly why.

Through the ache and the overwhelming chill, Alphys smiled, and lifted her hand in a wave.

The red blotch turned toward her, and as she drew closer, she could see the skull attached to it, staring for a moment before it broke out in a beaming grin.

“AUNT AL!"

Alphys barely had time to move before Papyrus sprinted across the ten or so yards between them and threw himself into his arms.

Or, rather, threw himself at her, squeezing her tight and pressing her head against the side of his skull, close to his neck. He had been taller than her for the past four months.

Even though she could barely move through all her clothes, she found herself laughing as she did her best to hug him back. He stayed there for a minute, rubbing his cheek against her head, before finally pulling back and looking at her with excited eyes and a pouting mouth.

“IT’S BEEN FOREVER!” he half-whined, half-cheered.

Alphys laughed again. “P-Papyrus, it’s been two days!”

“I KNOW, BUT IT FEELS LIKE FOREVER!” He stepped back, smiling once again. “I MISSED YOU! SANS MISSED YOU, TOO! HE LIKES IT WHEN YOU COME OVER AND TALK ABOUT SCIENCE STUFF WITH HIM!"

She looked over his shoulder and saw Sans wandering toward them, hands in the pockets of his favorite blue sweater, a lazy, content grin on his face. He had grown a little, too, though not as much as his brother. At this point, she doubted he would ever be as tall as her.

She gave him a soft smile.

“Well, I-I can try to come by more often … or we c-could email! Do you guys have a computer?”

“YES, BUT IT’S VERY OLD AND IT DOESN’T WORK VERY WELL,” Papyrus replied. Then his smile grew, turning toward Sans with pride. “MY BROTHER IS GOING TO TRY TO FIX IT."

Sans glanced away. Alphys straightened, eyes gleaming.

“I can help, if you want! H-have you done much already, Sans?”

Sans shrugged without meeting her eyes.

“just reinstalled the operating system, reformatted the hard drive, and checked each segment of the drive for bugs,” he muttered, with the sort of casual tone anyone else might use to talk about making cereal. “i was gonna take it apart and check on the processor next. i think it needs more ram, too."

“I-I’ve got some spare parts lying around. I can b-bring them by tomorrow?” she asked.

Sans looked at her, and though his expression barely changed, she had known him for long enough to catch the excitement that flashed across his face. “k.”

“YAY!" Papyrus cheered, bouncing a little on his heals. “I CAN’T WAIT TO ‘SURF THE WEB’ LIKE AUNT UNDYNE WAS TALKING ABOUT! I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT HAS TO DO WITH SPIDERS AND NO ONE I ASK KNOWS WHAT SURFING MEANS, BUT I KNOW IT WILL BE A LOT OF FUN!"

Alphys giggled, and out of the corner of her eye, she swore she saw Sans’s smile tilt into a smirk.

Then Papyrus grabbed her hand and dragged her forward, around the back of the house, toward the second entrance behind the inn.

“COME ON, COME INSIDE! RUBY MADE PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES!"

Alphys stumbled a bit and remembered exactly why she had been so uncomfortable before. But she managed not to trip, Papyrus walking as fast as he could without losing her and Sans traipsing along at her side.

She thought she might collapse with relief when they stepped inside. The house part of the inn was as cozy as the front area, even though Alphys had only seen the actual inn once. The whole place was lit with soft yellow light, the air smelling of sweets, every piece of furniture covered with knick-knacks that gave it all a nice, lived-in feel—though much less cluttered than her own workspace at the lab.

And it felt even better to see the toys scattered among the decorations, some on the coffee table, some on the couch or the floor or in the big wooden toybox Papyrus and Sans had painted their names on six months before.

Almost as good as it felt to see the soft, comfortable smiles on their faces.

She took off most of her outer clothes, stretching her cramped limbs once Papyrus let go of her hand, though he beckoned her forward a second later. They stopped in the living room, and within seconds, Alphys heard the familiar padding of soft feet on the floor to her right. She turned to see Ruby poking her head out of the kitchen, brown fur smoothed out and dusted with flour here and there, apron pristine. Her face lit up.

“Oh! Dr. Alphys. So good to see you again,” she said, giving Alphys her usual wide, serene smile. “Sorry Allandy isn’t here to say hi, they’ll be sorry they missed you. May I get you some tea? I’m sure Papyrus has already mentioned we have cookies.”

Alphys smiled back, hands clasped in front of her. “Oh, um … that would be g-great, thank you.”

Ruby nodded, grinning just as wide.

“I’ll go get the kettle boiling.”

With that, she shuffled back into the kitchen, humming a tune Alphys had heard at least ten times over her past visits, though she had never found out its name.

Ruby and Allandy were nice. Probably one of the nicest couples Alphys knew, even if she hadn’t known them before the adoption. They were patient and gentle, and Alphys had never heard a single complaint from Papyrus or Sans about their capabilities as caretakers.

Bonnie, the shopkeeper next door, had recommended her sister as a potential adoptive parent after the boys had stayed with her for a week, given that she was recently married but didn’t plan on having children for some time. And after a few interviews with Asgore and Undyne, it was clear that they were a good choice.

At first, after the boys moved, Asgore visited regularly, though briefly, just to make sure that Ruby and Allandy were turning out to be truly good guardians. But after the first few weeks, his visits tapered off, and after the first couple of months, they stopped almost entirely.

Just last week Papyrus had asked her if Uncle Asgore was going to visit anytime soon.

She was only saved from her blank stuttering by Allandy coming home and starting a tickle fight, but she doubted Papyrus had forgotten her lack of answer.

She could always say he was busy. Which he was. But he would never be too busy to visit the boys if he truly wanted to.

And she wasn’t sure whether “too busy to visit you” was better than explaining why Asgore’s face fell whenever he looked at them, why a single glance at their gloved hands was enough to remind him what his old friend had done. What Asgore—at least in his own mind—had let him do.

She doubted Papyrus had ever considered blaming him.

Sans … she never knew about Sans. But she doubted it.

He was sharp. He was observant. And he knew exactly who was at fault for what he had gone through.

Even if he never talked about it.

Not to her, at least. And not to Ruby, or Allandy, or even Undyne, no matter how much they had tried to gently nudge it out of him. Papyrus didn’t like to talk about his past either, but at least he seemed to have genuinely moved past it, as much as one could move past something like that.

Sans was far more relaxed than he had been a year ago. He smiled more, took up little “projects” of fixing or buildings things, and had most recently taken to making extremely bad jokes.

But while Papyrus told his guardians all about his day, Sans remained silent. While Papyrus drew them into “family game nights,” Sans either stayed on the sidelines or barely participated. And while Papyrus went in for as many hugs as they could dish out, Alphys had yet to see Sans accept a single embrace.

Papyrus had so many people now, so many friends, and a loving family. But after a year, Sans still only wanted his brother.

And the more she thought about it, the less eager she was to bring up exactly the sort of painful memories that had made him as quiet and withdrawn as he was now.

She sat down in the big, comfy armchair that was really too big for anyone living in this house, while the boys took their usual spots on the couch, Papyrus scooting as close to the arm as possible while Sans lounged at his side. Alphys smiled, and even she could feel that it was far more awkward, far more nervous, than any she had given them in a long time.

She cleared her throat.

“So … w-what’s new?”

Sans’s browbone furrowed, but though she was sure Papyrus noticed the change as well—he was even more observant than his brother when people were concerned—he still beamed, his sockets lighting up as they always still did at the smallest joy.

“OH, LOTS OF GOOD THINGS! AUNT BONNIE GAVE US SOME NEW TOYS FROM HER SHOP AND SHE FOUND THESE TWO HATS THAT FIT US PERFECTLY SO SHE GAVE US THOSE, TOO! MINE IS RED! AND SANS AND I FINISHED THIS REALLY DIFFICULT PUZZLE, THE ONE WE WERE WORKING ON WHEN YOU CAME OVER LAST TIME!"

“T-that was a tough one,” Alphys replied. Ten thousand pieces. She hadn’t even known they made them that big until she saw it laid out on the table several days before.

Papyrus nodded.

“YES, IT WAS, BUT WE FINISHED IT! RUBY SAID WE SHOULD GLUE IT TOGETHER AND PUT IT ON THE WALL BUT I DON’T THINK WE SHOULD. HOW COULD WE DO IT AGAIN IF WE GLUE IT TOGETHER?” he asked, tilting his head in utter confusion. Alphys giggled. Then Papyrus straightened again. “OH! AND SANS HAS STARTED READING THIS BOOK ABOUT PHYSICS MR. GERSON BROUGHT OVER WHEN HE VISITED! HE FOUND IT IN THE DUMP. IT’S A LITTLE SOGGY BUT MY BROTHER REALLY LIKES IT. HE EVEN READ IT INSTEAD OF TAKING A NAP!"

Yet again, Sans had looked away, pleased yet shy. Alphys found herself smiling wider, her anxiety almost forgotten. Sans rarely spoke of himself, and Papyrus tended to direct the conversation back to Sans. Always focusing on each other. Making sure neither was excluded.

How in the world could Dr. Gaster have ever …?

“You like physics, Sans?” she asked, before her thoughts could go any deeper.

Sans turned his head to face her, shrugging. “yeah.”

She brightened. “I’ve g-got some old physics books I’m not using. I can bring them over n-next time I visit.”

Sans’s browbone rose just enough to show genuine interest. Papyrus’s whole face lit up with glee.

“OH YAY! MY BROTHER WOULD LOVE THAT!"

Not for the first time, she found herself wondering if they were telepathic, and part of the reason Sans spoke so little was because Papyrus knew his thoughts and spoke for him. At this point, not much could have surprised her.

She cleared her throat and fidgeted, her smile falling before she had the chance to stop it.

“So, um … I actually had s-something … I w-wanted to talk to you guys about.”

“REALLY?” Papyrus tilted his head. “WHAT IS IT?”

Sans, apparently, caught on to the tone in her voice. Where once she would have seen pure suspicion, now she saw a fair bit of concern. Alphys very, very seriously considered not saying anything at all.

But she cared about him far too much to run away now.

She swallowed hard and glanced to the side. “It’s … I … I-I went to see, um … D-Dr. G-Gaster … yesterday.”

And all at once, the air in the room thickened. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched them both stiffen, watched their hands fly across the space between them to grip each other’s tight. It wasn’t the first time she had talked about her visits. In a year, their response hadn’t gotten any better.

“OH,” Papyrus managed, as his best attempt at a smile curling up on his face. “HOW IS HE DOING?"

Alphys couldn’t bring herself to look at Sans.

“He’s … fine,” she replied, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “He’s … a-actually been working on something. S-something … I thought … you might want to know about.”

Papyrus’s curiosity overcame his apprehension. “WHAT IS IT?"

She forced herself to glance at Sans, only to find him staring at the floor, his sockets dark.

“It’s … it’s a m-machine,” she said. “And … w-well, it’s a l-little hard to explain, b-but … it’s s-supposed to … he t-thinks it will …”

She let out a shuddering breath, then closed her eyes and drew in another one. Calm. This was fine. She was the adult here. If anyone was calm, it should be her.

She opened her eyes and looked at them, riding her brief rush of courage like a tidal wave.

“If it w-works … it might … f-fix Sans’s eye.”

For several seconds, they just stared. Sans at the floor, Papyrus at her. Then his sockets grew, and his mouth fell open, and it was like she had just told him the Barrier had been broken and they were all going to the Surface, but he wasn’t sure if he could dare to believe it.

“REALLY?” he asked, his voice quieter than she had ever heard it, tinged with hope and a growing smile. “HE … WANTS TO FIX MY BROTHER? HE’S GOING TO FIX HIM?"

Alphys wasn’t sure whether she wanted to smile back or fidget right off the couch. “Well, we … we can’t be c-completely sure that it’ll work, but—”

“i told him no.”

Alphys paused, mouth wide open before she clamped it shut. She and Papyrus turned as one to face Sans, though he had yet to look up.

She blinked. “W-what?”

Sans’s hands curled into bony little fists in his lap. Even through the gloves he had yet to take off in front of her, she swore she could see the outside of a metal plate.

“he was workin on that when we first got out,” he muttered, a worn bitterness in his voice that made him sound far older than he really was. “i told him he wasnt gettin anywhere near my eye.”

Papyrus’s browbone rose, his smile entirely gone, and Alphys suddenly felt like she had opened up a pool of worms rather than a can.

She shifted again, and cursed herself for feeling so small and helpless when these boys needed her to be strong.

“Sans … I-I can’t imagine how you must feel right now.. I … I know I’ll n-never understand,” she started, her voice shaking despite her best attempts to make it sound assured. “But … it could w-work. I saw the machine, and I t-think it could really h-help you. And we’d make sure n-nothing bad happened, we’d all be there with you, a-and—”

“are you gonna make me? ” he asked, his head tilting up just enough to meet her eyes.

His empty sockets burned into her, cutting right to her SOUL. She didn’t think she could have looked away if she tried.

“No,” she said, as much as it felt like giving up. “It’s … it’s your choice.”

He kept staring after that, his face as unreadable as it had ever been, and she couldn’t bring herself to break his gaze. At last, he dropped his eyes to the floor, his hands so tight that they trembled in his lap.

“i dont want him anywhere near my eye."

Alphys bit her lip and let out a long sigh. “Sans … I know—”

“you DONT know,” he cut her off, so sharp and loud it made her jump. “youll NEVER know all the stuff he did to us. and im not gonna let him do it again!”

Before she could speak, before she could even think of responding, he leapt up from the couch and scrambled away, down the hall to their shared bedroom.

“SANS!” Papyrus called after him, turning around on the couch to face the hall. “BROTHER!”

The only reply he got was the slamming of a door.

Papyrus flinched, frozen for a moment in shock, before his gaze fell to his hands, sad and far more helpless than someone as kind-SOULed as him ever should have looked. He turned to her, his brow tilted up, his hands clasped in his lap.

“I’M SORRY, AUNT AL."

Alphys shook her head, so desperate to assuage his guilt that she could almost forget about her own.

“No, Papyrus, it’s … it’s okay,” she managed.

Papyrus opened his mouth, but whatever he had meant to say was cut off as footsteps sounded from the kitchen, and Ruby poked her head past the doorway, her forehead creased in concern.

“Is everything alright?” she asked. She looked to Alphys, then Papyrus, face only scrunching further. “Did Sans go somewhere?”

Alphys bit her lip, then stood up from the chair, her hands clasped in front of her.

“I … I’d probably b-better go, Ruby,” she said, unable to bring herself to meet her eyes. “I d-don’t … I j-just brought up something he d-didn’t want to talk about.”

Ruby turned to face the hall where Sans had disappeared. When she looked back, there was no anger, no suspicion, just a resigned sort of sadness Alphys had seen on far too many occasions already.

Alphys looked at Papyrus, because as much of a coward as she was, she couldn’t leave him without a soft, apologetic smile. “I’ll c-come back tomorrow with those books I told you about, a-and the computer parts. And I-I’ll see if I can find you a new puzzle, okay?”

Papyrus stared back at her, sockets wide and filled with more emotions than Alphys knew how to read. He gave a small, solemn nod.

“OKAY."

Before she could say anything else—before she could turn tail and run out the door—he jumped off the couch and leapt into her arms, squeezing her almost tight enough to hurt. Alphys froze, then went limp and hugged him back.

After a minute, he stepped back, giving her a long look but not saying anything else. Alphys nodded to Ruby, and Ruby nodded back. She pulled on the hat and coat and boots and gloves and scarf that still dripped with melted snow.

Then she slipped out the back door and into the chill of the snow outside.

Part of her wanted to scream, to beat her head against something, but most of her just felt numb. Embarrassed and ridiculous and guilty, but still numb.

She hadn’t expected much. Or maybe she had, without realizing it. Maybe the time that had passed had made her forget exactly what those boys had gone through. Maybe the tiny glimpses she got of his good side—along with all her own memories—had made her forget exactly what Dr. Gaster did.

Maybe she had gotten so determined to help them that she hadn’t considered she might make it worse instead.

She sighed, and the warm air huffed a thick white cloud in front of her face.

Maybe it was better this way. Better to let things keep being alright, or something close to alright, just as they had been for the past year. Better not to take pointless risks that brought back memories no one wanted to face and made her feel like a complete idiot for thinking that maybe, it would actually be worth it.

It was Sans’s eye.

If she had gone through a fraction of what he had gone through, she wouldn’t want Dr. Gaster anywhere near it either.

The freezing wind blew around her, the snow crunching beneath her feet, but all Alphys could focus on was the glistening landscape spread out in front of her, full of bright lights and color and cheer.

And what it would be like to only see half of it.

Chapter Text

It was the first time Papyrus could remember that Sans had locked their door without both of them inside.

Well, there had been one time when they were still learning how to use the lock and accidentally locked themselves out of the room, but Papyrus didn’t think that counted.

He spent half an hour after Aunt Al left knocking on the door, pleading with Sans to come out, to talk to him, anything he could think of. Ruby tried, too, and Allandy after they got home. But none of them heard a sound.

Eventually, Ruby called out to Sans that dinner was ready and she would make sure his plate was kept fresh for whenever he was ready to eat. Then they all went to the table and ate in silence.

When Papyrus tried the door again after the plates were cleared away, it opened.

He slipped inside without making a sound, as if his brother might hear him and run. Sans lay on their bed across the room, on top of the covers, facing the wall.

Papyrus swallowed, took a deep breath, then approached him, stopping just before he reached the bed. He paused again.

“BROTHER?”

Sans didn’t move. Papyrus gave him a few seconds, then sat down on the edge of the mattress with a soft sigh.

“I KNOW YOU’RE NOT ASLEEP, SANS,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “YOU NEVER SLEEP WITH YOUR ANKLES CROSSED LIKE THAT.”

At first, Sans said nothing, and Papyrus started to wonder whether he would have to actually pick his brother up to get him to respond. Then he shifted, just a bit, just enough to prove that he was, in fact, listening.

“i always sleep with you,” he murmured, sounding far more tired than annoyed. “how would you know what i sleep like alone?”

Papyrus sat up a little straighter. “BECAUSE I’M YOUR BROTHER AND I KNOW EVERYTHING.”

Sans paused, then shifted onto his back to peer up at Papyrus, half of his browbone raised, his permanent smile twitching with amusement.

“i think people say that about mothers, bro.”

“WELL, WE DON’T HAVE A MOTHER, SO IT CAN BE BROTHERS FOR US,” Papyrus replied. Sans snorted, and for a second, he seemed to relax. Then he looked away again, and Papyrus felt his haughty expression fall. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?”

Sans looked at him again, sockets wide. “tell you what?”

“THAT HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FIX YOUR EYE.”

Papyrus had never really understood the meaning of the phrase “thick silence,” but now, he almost could. Sans looked away as soon as Papyrus looked up, and Papyrus didn’t need a mirror to see the battling expressions on his own face. Hurt, a little, his teeth pressed tightly together. But far more concerned.

“DID HE REALLY SAY HE COULD?” he asked, after a minute of him staring at Sans and Sans staring at the wall.

Sans curled up further, his sockets narrowed.

“he said he could try.”

Papyrus wrung his hands in his lap, something he hadn’t done much before he saw Aunt Al doing it all the time. “AND YOU SAID NO?”

Sans’s knees were almost up to his chest.

“he’s never done anythin to help either of us, bro,” he murmured, angry and pained at the same time. “why would he start now?”

“BECAUSE HE’S DIFFERENT,” Papyrus replied, with more certainty than he had thought he felt. He nodded to himself. “HE CHANGED. I’M SURE HE CHANGED.”

Sans didn’t respond. Papyrus ground his teeth.

“AND … HE DID HELP US BEFORE,” he added, much more softly. Sans tensed. But Papyrus didn’t stop. “THE FIRST THING I REMEMBER IS MY ARM COMING OFF. AND I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO, AND I WAS SCARED, AND HE CAME IN AND HE HELPED ME.”

“yeah, then he shoved you away,” Sans bit out. He didn’t need to turn for Papyrus to know he was glaring at the wall.

Papyrus hesitated. “I THINK HE WAS SCARED OF ME.”

Sans tilted his head to look at him out of the corner of his eye. Papyrus shrugged.

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT I DID THAT WAS SCARY, BUT … I THINK HE WAS SCARED WHEN I TRIED TO HUG HIM.”

Sans didn’t say anything at first. He looked away again, back to the wall, and as much as Papyrus wanted to lean over to see his expression, he stayed where he was. He could just make out one of his tiny baby hands stroking the fabric of the quilt, as if appreciating it for the very first time. Aunt Bonnie had given them that quilt when they moved in with Ruby, as a “housewarming present,” whatever that was. It was old, made of patches of fabric that couldn’t be used for anything else, and the edges were frayed and there was a spot near one corner that smelled funny close up.

And as many times as Ruby had offered them a new one, neither Papyrus nor Sans had ever thought of accepting.

A tiny sound slipped past Sans’s teeth, like a high-pitched whine, the sort Papyrus had heard from his own mouth many times right before he started crying. Only it had been so long since he had seen Sans cry, and he had almost forgotten his brother could sound like that, too.

He shifted a little closer, but all Sans did was curl his hand into the quilt.

“i cant let him do that to me again, bro,” he murmured. He drew in a breath like a sniffle, shaking his head without lifting it. “i cant … i just cant …”

Papyrus squeezed his hands in his lap, sitting up straighter even as his SOUL trembled in his chest.

“SANS?”

Sans didn’t reply. He pressed his face further into the bed. But Papyrus had never given up before, and he moved forward almost without thinking, so close that his knees touched Sans’s back.

“I LOVE YOU,” he said, resting a hand on his brother’s shoulder and giving it a tight squeeze. “I LOVE YOU SO, SO MUCH. IT EVEN HURTS SOMETIMES, HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU. I DIDN’T THINK IT COULD HURT TO LOVE SOMEONE BUT IT DOES.”

His breath shivered, his throat tight, tears brimming at the edge of his sockets. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to smile or frown. He held Sans’s shoulder tighter.

“AND I WANT YOU TO BE H-HAPPY.”

Sans flinched when his voice cracked, but Papyrus just kept his hand where it was, forcing a sad smile even if his brother couldn’t see it.

“YOU’RE NOT HAPPY NOW.”

It wasn’t a question, but Sans shook his head anyway, even as he curled even more against the quilt. “im fine, papyrus, i told you before—”

“YOU’RE NOT FINE,” Papyrus cut him off. The first few tears slipped down his cheekbones, and it was all he could do to choke back a sob. “YOU’RE NEVER FINE, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU SAY IT.”

Sans’s breath shook. More and more tears dripped off the edge of Papyrus’s jaw and down onto his brother’s sweater.

“AND I WORRY ABOUT YOU, ALL THE TIME, BUT THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO. I WANT TO HELP YOU, BROTHER. I WANT YOU TO BE AS HAPPY AS I AM. THEN I’LL BE HAPPIER AND YOU’LL BE HAPPIER AND WE’LL JUST KEEP MAKING EACH OTHER HAPPIER AND HAPPIER UNTIL WE’RE THE HAPPIEST MONSTERS IN THE WHOLE UNDERGROUND.”

He lifted his free hand to wipe his wet cheekbones. It didn’t help much, and it made the sleeve of his sweater soggy, but he didn’t care.

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO TRY IF YOU DON’T WANT TO,” he went on. He shifted a little closer. “BUT … MAYBE … MAYBE IT WOULD HELP YOU BE HAPPIER. IF YOU TRIED.”

He gave himself one more moment to sit there, drowning in the ache, in the affection, in the memories that had seemed so far away just that morning. Then he swallowed, forcing back the rest of his tears, and held his head high, smiling for his brother, for the most precious person in his life, for the person who had once made up his whole world.

And still did.

Sans trembled under his hold, which just made Papyrus grip him tighter, rubbing his thumb over the fabric that covered smooth bone. It seemed like an eternity later that Sans let out a long, heavy breath, shaking as hard as he was. He looked even smaller than he had the day they first met.

“and what if it doesnt help?” he whispered.

Papyrus set his brow.

“THEN WE TRY SOMETHING ELSE. AND SOMETHING ELSE AND SOMETHING ELSE UNTIL WE FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE YOU HAPPY.”

Sans tilted his head just enough to look at him. His right eye had gone dark, while his left glowed blue, swirling with tints of purple. Tear-tracks still gleamed on his cheeks. Papyrus drew in a shuddering breath.

“I’M NOT GOING TO GIVE UP, SANS,” he said, with all his confidence, all his determination, and all his love. “NOT EVER. NOT ON YOU.”

A sob forced its way past Sans’s throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, and one of his hands came up to rest over Papyrus’s own.

“i love you, too, bro,” he breathed, with so much conviction, so much feeling, it made Papyrus’s SOUL ache. Sans tightened his grip over his hand. “will you …?”

Papyrus leaned closer. “YES?”

Sans swallowed, and a hard shiver ran up his spine.

“will you … stay with me?” His sockets peaked open, just enough to meet Papyrus’s gaze. “if … if i let him do it?”

Papyrus didn’t know how long it had been since he heard his brother’s voice sound so vulnerable. So utterly afraid. And it would have been so easy to tell him not to do it. To let it go. So he wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of anymore, so they could just go on with their lives and forget Aunt Al had ever brought this up.

But Papyrus loved his brother, more than anything in the world. So he nodded instead.

“I PROMISE. I WON’T LEAVE, EVEN FOR A SECOND,” he said. He reached up and put his other hand on top of Sans’s, so his brother’s one hand was carefully held between both of his own. “I WON’T LET ANYONE HURT YOU EVER AGAIN.”

Sans looked at him. He just looked at him, for a very long time, searching every inch of his expression, every little shift, just like he had done to every new person they met, testing them, observing them. Papyrus couldn’t remember the last time Sans had given that look to him, but he didn’t move. He didn’t falter. He stared at his brother and he waited.

And at last, Sans’s whole body went limp, except for the tight squeeze of his hand, and he let out a long, shuddering breath.

“okay.”

Papyrus blinked, wondering if he had misheard. But Sans was still looking at him, remnants of tears at the edges of his sockets, his good eye flashing with tinges of purple while the rest of it glowed blue.

Bit by bit, Papyrus felt his mouth curl into the widest smile he had worn in months.

Then he threw himself forward, almost hard enough to knock both of them off the bed, and pulled his brother into a tight hug, nestling his head under his chin, cradling his skull with one hand while the other wrapped around his ever-pudgy waist.

Sans hugged him back, loose at first, then tighter and tighter until it almost hurt. Papyrus didn’t care. He wouldn’t have cared if his brother cracked his ribs. Nothing in the world could wipe away his smile.

He let his eyes begin to glow as fresh tears dampened his sweater. He glowed brighter and brighter until the dim room was almost completely lit up, and he let his fingers trail over his brother’s skull, up and down his spine, caressing, occasionally rubbing comforting little circles like Allandy sometimes did for him. Holding his brother like Ruby had held him, like Uncle Asgore had held him, like Aunt Al and Aunt Undyne and Aunt Bonnie and so many wonderful nameless people had hugged him when he asked.

Like they would have held Sans, too, if he had let them.

But that was okay. Papyrus would just have to hug him enough for everyone.

Sans cried, and Papyrus lay there, holding him, touching him, glowing, murmuring soft words of reassurance he barely listened to as they came out of his mouth. Maybe, if he could glow again, he would let everyone hug him. Maybe he would help Ruby make cookies or play catch with him and Allandy or cuddle with Aunt Undyne when they slept over at her house and built a pillow fort.

Or maybe he wouldn’t do any of those things, but he would be happy anyway.

Papyrus was okay with that.

If he was happy, Papyrus would be happy. And he would be happy. Papyrus would make sure of it.

He glowed his bright orange eyes and held his brother a little tighter still.

A chance. They had a chance.

And a chance was all they had ever needed.

Chapter Text

They had grown.

It shouldn’t have been the first thing he noticed when they walked into the room, but it was. They hadn’t grown at the same rate, to be sure. One—Sans remained very small, and his br—Two—Papyrus likely came up above Gaster’s shoulder now, but they were still only about a head apart in height.

They still looked like children.

Apparently, even if he had given them a good deal more time, even if he had given them a full year, that wouldn’t have changed.

They had new clothes now, as they had presumably outgrown their old ones, though Papyrus still wore that red scarf. It was hard to tell from the distance, but he couldn’t make out a single tear or stain. It was in the same condition as it was the day Gaster gave it to him.

He wondered if he still had the color cube.

Then he smacked that thought away like he might kill a mosquito.

Sans’s eyes had locked on him from the second they stepped into the lab—a real lab, the one Alphys apparently used now, bright and cluttered and exactly like her. His sockets went dark, his whole face hard, as he held so tight to Papyrus’s hand that it was a wonder Papyrus didn’t flinch away.

But Papyrus was focused on Gaster, too, and unlike Sans—as well as Undyne, behind them—who glared at him with unmistakable disdain, Papyrus’s expression remained as gentle as Gaster remembered it.

“HELLO,” he said at last, and his voice had gotten lower, just a bit, but it had hardly changed in the lab, and Gaster had forgotten that skeletons’ voices usually did drop as they got older. Gaster said nothing. Papyrus fidgeted. “UM … HOW ARE YOU?”

Still nothing. Gaster felt like he should look away, at least ignore him properly, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Papyrus did his best to smile, and after a minute of uncomfortably thick silence, he spoke again.

“WE’RE BOTH DOING WELL. WE LIKE OUR HOUSE A LOT. AND RUBY, AND ALLANDY.”

Quiet.

“DO YOU KNOW THEM?”

Gaster wasn’t even sure if his head would shake if he told it to. He tried glaring, but it didn’t come out very well, because Papyrus just smiled wider.

“YOU SHOULD COME VISIT SOMETIME! WE COULD HAVE COOKIES!”

There really was no proper response to that, so he didn’t even try to give one.

Before Papyrus could say anything else, two sets of footsteps sounded in the hallway outside. Gaster recognized both of them. So when Alphys stepped in through the door, wringing her hands and trying to force a smile, he was not surprised.

Papyrus, apparently, hadn’t expected her, and broke out into an even wider grin.

“OH! HI AUNT AL!”

His mouth was open, his feet already moving, ready to talk or hug her or however it was he greeted her nowadays, given how often he saw her. But before he could move, the second pair of footsteps sounded again where they had stopped, and Asgore stepped up to Alphys’s side.

Papyrus’s face lit up.

“UNCLE ASGORE!” He threw himself forward and all but slammed into Asgore’s front, wrapping his arms as far around him as he could. His face pressed into the king’s robe until he tilted it up to meet his eyes. “IT’S BEEN A REALLY REALLY REALLY LONG TIME!”

Asgore looked down at him with pursed lips and soft, sad eyes. Gaster’s SOUL twisted.

“Yes, Papyrus,” Asgore breathed. “I’m sorry about that.”

Papyrus let him go, but stayed only a step away. “IT’S OKAY. BUT WE MISSED YOU!”

The sound that left Asgore’s mouth was something between a sigh and a laugh.

“And I, you,” he replied. He looked to Sans, who watched them both but made no move to hug him. Asgore’s brow creased, but he said nothing about it, and turned to Papyrus again with his best attempt at a smile. “You’re both doing well, I hope?”

Papyrus immediately broke into a ramble as to what they had been doing since Asgore had visited them last—apparently quite some time ago, though on the other hand, Papyrus certainly did know how to make six days sound like six months. Asgore nodded along with each account, while Alphys shuffled around the room, checking each machine, and Undyne and Sans eyed Gaster as if he might summon a blaster and destroy them all at a second’s notice. Even though Gaster was quite sure that they were all here of their own free will.

Even if he could still hardly believe it.

No matter how much work he had put into the machine, how much of his—overly abundant—time he had spent fixing every little glitch, how many hoops he had had to jump through just to get each step of the process approved, he had never expected Sans to actually agree. When Alphys burst into his cell to tell him a week before, it had taken a good five minutes before he realized she wasn’t playing a prank.

But neither of those two had ever been considerate enough to do what he expected.

After five minutes, Papyrus’s chattering finally wound down, and one by one, everyone turned their attention to the one person no one—except perhaps Papyrus—was happy to be sharing the room with.

“Gaster, would you please tell Sans what is going to happen?” Asgore asked, and though Gaster could still hear the tension in his voice, he managed a smile, his eyes gentle and hopeful and far too difficult to look at for more than a few seconds at a time.

Gaster picked a spot on the wall over all their shoulders and stared at it instead.

“He will be given a low-dose anesthetic administered in gas form,” he began, making a vague gesture with his real hand toward the mask sitting on the table with a long cord linking it to the tank of compressed anesthesia. “This will numb all pain receptors, but will allow him to remain partially conscious during the procedure.”

There had been no question of whether Sans would be anesthetized, at least to some extent, from the moment talk of actually going through with this had begun. Gaster hadn’t even thought about it, but the first thing Asgore had asked was whether there was any chance Sans would feel pain, and apparently “it’s impossible to say until the procedure begins” was all the answer he needed.

Gaster didn’t protest. He doubted there would be much, if any, pain, but if nothing else, it lessened the chances of Sans being coherent enough to make snarky comments and distract him from his work.

Asgore had looked pleased when he immediately listed off the options for anesthesia and their varying levels of effectiveness, and he swore he saw a bit of relief flash across Alphys’s face. Undyne just glared.

He still wasn’t sure which response was worse.

Now, Alphys began to fidget, turning to Sans in concern.

“A-are you sure you don’t want the full dose, Sans?” she asked. “It’s s-safe, we’ve used it before, and you won’t h-have to—”

“no.”

Everyone turned at the single, biting syllable that fell from Sans’s mouth. But Sans’s eyes were locked on Gaster, his brow lowered, his eyelights little more than pinpricks.

“i wanna stay awake,” he repeated, apparently still talking to Alphys even if the words were hardly meant for her. “i wanna know what he’s doin.”

Alphys cleared her throat, and even Asgore looked rather uncomfortable, but Gaster just stared back at Sans with the same blank eyes. He wasn’t sure why anyone was surprised at his lack of trust. The fact that he had agreed in the first place still made Gaster want to beat his skull against a brick wall.

“Very well,” Asgore said, his voice shattering the silence like glass. “Please continue, Gaster.”

Gaster remained silent for a moment as Sans gave him an even sharper scowl, before looking back to the machine as if the interruption had never happened. “After the anesthetic has taken effect, I will attach these electrodes to his right eye socket. Then—”

“Hey, Doc, you wanna talk to the kid?” Undyne cut in, one hand on her hip and an eyebrow raised. “Y’know, since he’s the one having the procedure.”

Gaster met her eyes, though he knew, unlike Alphys and Asgore, he could give her any number of hard looks and they wouldn’t have the smallest effect. Whether she was capable of taking him in a fight, he would likely never know, but she held herself with a confidence he doubted could be shaken by anything he did or said. She stared back at him, her mouth in a hard line, daring him to refuse.

After nearly a minute, Gaster let his gaze fall down to Sans, who now looked equally hateful and confused. Gaster’s expression didn’t change.

“Once the electrodes are securely attached, I will start up the machine at the lowest setting. I will then gradually increase the setting as we see that the energy has no negative effects on you.”

“and how d’you know when to stop?” Sans asked. Gaster didn’t miss the way he shifted a little closer to Papyrus, though he doubted Sans noticed it himself.

“If you show any signs of adverse reactions, we will discontinue the procedure,” Gaster replied, watching the rest of his audience out of the corner of his eye in case they decided to cut him off right there. “Until then, we will continue until the highest setting. This gives us the best chance of a successful outcome.”

Undyne raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms over her chest.

“You sure you know what you’re doing here?”

“Undyne,” Asgore chided.

Undyne threw her arms out to the side, brow furrowed and nose scrunched in a scowl. “What? If he’s gonna be poking and prodding at one of my favorite little punks, I’m gonna make sure he does it right.”

She looked back to Gaster. One of her free hands switched at her side, and a second later, a glowing blue spear appeared in her grasp.

“And you listen here, Doc,” she hissed, jabbing a finger of her other hand in front of her, eyes harder than he had seen on anyone since that day in the training room a year before. “If he comes out of this with so much as a scratch, if you make either one of them cry, you’re gonna get to see firsthand how many ways I can use this spear, you got it?”

“Undyne, please,” Asgore tried again, now almost pleading.

But before Undyne could say anything else, Papyrus stepped up to her side, laying a hand on her arm.

“IT’S OKAY, AUNT UNDYNE. HE’S NOT GOING TO HURT US THIS TIME,” he said, and though the fire remained in Undyne’s eyes, the spear disappeared, as if she couldn’t bring herself to keep it out with Papyrus so close. He turned to Gaster, his sockets wide, mouth curled into a tiny smile. “HE’S GOOD NOW. HE JUST WANTS TO HELP.”

There was no question. No uncertainty. Just hope and trust.

Gaster held his gaze for all of three seconds before he looked away.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alphys place a hand on Sans’s shoulder, gentle, hesitant, but with enough confidence to suggest she had done it many times before.

“You d-don’t have to go through with this, Sans,” she said, her voice assuring despite her stutter. “If … if you c-changed your mind, I mean, we all r-really want to help you, b-but …”

Sans was staring at the ground, sockets dark, but at this he lifted his head, just enough to shoot Gaster a brief, blank glance.

“no,” he said, quiet yet absolute. “i’ll do it.”

Alphys pursed her lips and gave his shoulder a firm squeeze. Undyne glared at Gaster, her now spear-less hand curled into a fist. Asgore nodded.

“Very well.”

Papyrus moved from Undyne’s side and wrapped Sans in a long, tight hug. It was hard to tell from a distance, but Gaster swore he could see his eyes glowing a faint orange as his fingers stroked over Sans’s skull. Sans hesitated only a second before squeezing him back.

Gaster turned away and stared at the wall to his left.

A minute later, they pulled apart, and at last, Asgore gave another nod, and the procedure began.

Papyrus stayed by Sans’s side as he laid down on the table—cushioned to resemble a bed. Alphys placed the mask over his face, while Papyrus squeezed his hand and Undyne gave him a firm pat on the arm, telling him that she would break Gaster’s skull in two if he tried anything. Sans stared up at them for several minutes after that, his sockets more dull and unfocused by the second. But he kept them open by sheer force of will. He remained cloudy and faded, but awake.

Undyne gave Gaster one more hard glare, but stepped back to stand close to Asgore to make room for him to work. Papyrus leaned in close to Sans’s skull, whispered something in a voice quieter than Gaster had thought he was capable of, then joined Undyne. Alphys stayed close, the only one in the room who understood the machine well enough to help him should he need it.

But he wouldn’t need it.

He had tested the machine ten times, at varying intensities. He had guarded against power surges. He knew Sans—physically, at least—better than any of them.

When Gaster approached the table, picked up the electrodes, and began to attach them to Sans’s right socket, he felt, for a second, that he was back in the lab. Back to doing his experiments. Back to keeping his two living subjects trapped in the sort of torture he doubted any monster alive could imagine.

Then he felt the four sets of eyes locked on him, and glanced down to see a blue striped sweater instead of a green gown.

He said nothing. He did not turn around. But he finished the matrix with a bit more care than he had done the first time around.

If he was going to do this again, he was going to do it right.

Once the matrix was set, he triple-checked that all the points were correct. It was more difficult to work around the gas mask—but then again, it was also easier to work without On—Sans conscious enough to do anything more than give a vague glare in his general direction. He stepped away, and immediately Alphys stepped forward, not even glancing at him, looking over the points even though he knew she had little idea of what correct and incorrect would look like.

The gesture satisfied Asgore and Undyne, though, at least enough so that they didn’t protest when Gaster approached the machine. He paused, waiting for someone to tell him to stop. For Alphys to squeak in fear. For Undyne to throw a spear at his head.

No one did.

He glanced over his shoulder, and Papyrus gave him a shaky, yet genuine smile, then two very awkward thumbs-up.

Gaster jerked his head back to the machine.

He put his hand on the lever, hesitated one more time, then pulled it down to the first setting.

The machine hummed to life, and Gaster watched the buzz of magical energy travel down the core and out into the electrodes in Sans’s eye.

Everyone in the room froze. Alphys watched him, but Gaster kept his attention on Sans. He shifted as the magic flowed into him, but more like a tickle than any sort of pain. But Gaster didn’t relax. He waited a minute, and when there was no further response, he brought the lever down further. The magic increased. Another shift, a slight crease of the browbone, but nothing else.

Bit by bit, Gaster increased the power. The flow of magic grew, lighting up Sans’s eyesocket and humming through the air. The four sets of eyes never left him, and the tension from them was almost as strong as the magic itself.

Stronger. Stronger still.

The magic sparked.

No response.

It was working, everything was going just as planned, it would work this time, it—

.9.

Gaster barely recognized Sans’s face tensing until his HP fell a full tenth of a point without warning. Then his eyes focused, and he saw that Sans had gone stiff, his browbone creased, his hands curled up at his sides. He mumbled something, but the noise faded into the gas mask, his head tilting from side to side as if searching for something.

For someone.

Gaster pushed the lever back up again, but the power didn’t fade. It didn’t stop. It kept going, at the same intensity, pulsing along heedless of Gaster shoving the lever all the way back, it should have stopped, it should be off, but it was still going.

No. No no no, not again, he had checked for this, he had planned for everything, that was why he had protected against power surges, the machine itself couldn’t—

1-S’s sockets shut, and a whimper left his throat. His HP dropped again, .8 now, .7, .6, .5 … it kept going. It kept dropping.

He was going to die.

He was going to die, and Gaster couldn’t stop it, the machine wasn’t stopping, but if he shut it straight off it might be too much of a shock to his system, it might make it worse, he had to do something, the numbers were falling, down, down, again and again again—

Undyne rushed forward, spewing curses, her hands up and already glowing green with healing energy, Alphys and Asgore right behind her. But before she could reach the bed, she jolted to a stop.

Her eyes went wide, and her lips parted.

She stared.

It took Gaster several seconds to realize she was staring at him.

At his hands.

He looked down.

When had his hands settled on 1-S’s skull and chest?

When had his hands begun to glow?

The green light around them flickered, beginning to fade as he realized exactly what he was doing, that the energy from his hands was flowing into 1-S’s body, stopping the fall of his HP and holding it steady. He couldn’t heal. He hadn’t been able to heal for more than a year, he had lost that ability, he had given up that ability, he—

Then he looked down at 1-S, and all he could see was Sitka.

And Lucida and Aven and Tammy and Corbel.

And Times.

Times when they were children and they fell and cracked one of their bones and Gaster healed them while ranting on about how they needed to be more careful, just walk over the creek instead of trying to leap the whole way across, and Times just laughed as if the crack in their leg didn’t hurt at all. And it didn’t, because under Gaster’s careful ministrations, it had already healed.

.5.

.6.

Gaster watched Sans’s HP begin to increase. Slowly, so slowly, and at .6 it paused, slowing down further, the light around Gaster’s hands weak, but it was there. Alphys was moving in the corner of his eye, adjusting the machine, checking the manual he had given her, steadying the power flow until Sans stopped wincing, and his body went limp with a small sigh of relief.

He had grown over the past year, but now, lying there, he had never looked smaller. More fragile. So easily snuffed out. So easily brushed aside. Yet so determined, as long as he had a reason to hold on.

.7.

There were three skeletons left in existence. Three.

There would never be any more.

And Gaster couldn’t lose another one. Not another one. No one else killed in cold blood, no one else turned to dust, no one else giving up because they had lost everything, no one else—

No one else doing what the humans had done—

No one else doing what he had done—

The glow around his hands faltered. A surge of panic raced through him, no, no, he couldn’t let it stop, he couldn’t let him die, he can’t die, not now, not again, can’t let him die—

Then something touched his arm and he jerked his head to the right.

Papyrus stood just next to him, right in front of the bed, looking up at him with soft sockets and a gentle smile. Gaster felt his bones shaking, his eyes wide, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

Without a word, Papyrus slipped in closer to the bed, and on reflex, Gaster stepped back to give him room. Tw—Papyrus laid his hands on his brother’s skull and chest, glowing as easily as he always had, lighting up the whole room with his magic.

.8.

.9.

In under a minute, Sans’s HP had returned to normal, his face smoothed out. His sockets went dark and his body limp, giving in to sleep despite his former determination to avoid it. The glow around Papyrus’s hands faded, but he stayed there for a moment, waiting, watching, and when Sans remained stable, Papyrus smiled. He looked up at Gaster and nodded.

Gaster stared at him for a full five seconds before he jerked his head away and returned to the machine.

He kept it on a lower intensity for the next ten minutes, apparently just weak enough to avoid causing damage. Sans’s HP didn’t change again. Gaster barely noticed anyone else in the room.

At last, he turned off the machine and backed away from the table. He moved to stand by the wall, and the bustling and murmurs of the other four in the room faded into a blur. Someone might have called his name once or twice, but he didn’t look up. He didn’t even listen.

All he could do was look down at his hands. The hands that had held the drill. The saw. The pick. The hands that had flipped a switch and brought a scream. The hands that had glowed blue and slammed a chi—sub—skele—Papyrus into the wall, again and again, cracking his bones, detaching his limbs, beating him until he was the closest to death he had ever been. The hands that had refused to glow green instead, even when he most needed it.

The hands that still held the vague remnants of magic now, clinging to his fingers and lighting up the holes in his palms.

He curled them into fists, leaned back against the wall, and slid down until he hit the floor.

The world bustled around him, alive and afraid and hopeful, but Gaster just curled up and let his empty mind drift far, far away.

Chapter Text

His eye hurt, and everything was dark.

For a second, a split second, Sans was back in the lab. He was back in the cell, dumped there with bandages around his head, and when he opened his eyes only one of them actually saw. And something he had taken for granted, one of the few things in his life that had ever been truly his, was yanked out from under his feet.

Then, before he could whimper, before the tears could grow in his sockets, he felt a bony hand squeeze his own, fingers stroking over his skull.

And he was home.

It didn’t matter where he was. It didn’t matter what was wrong.

His brother was here. And as long as they were together, they would be okay.

Sans squeezed his aching sockets and groaned.

“BROTHER?”

Papyrus—yes, that was his name. His voice felt far away, blurry, faded, but Sans could just make it out, somewhere to his left. The hand caressing his skull paused for a moment before pulling away, only to join the other, clutching Sans’s hand as tight as he could. Sans wanted to squeeze back, but just moving his fingers felt like the most difficult task in the world.

Sleep. He could just go back to sleep now, right? He was okay. He was safe. He was with his brother, and even if he hurt a little, it wasn’t that bad. His mind was still fuzzy, and his body heavy, and his eye just—

“Sans?”

He knew that voice. Feminine, but … lower than the other women he knew. Harder. Tougher. The sort of voice that could shout as loud as his brother without sounding threatening.

It had a name. He knew it had a name.

Fins. Fins and a ponytail. Fins and ponytail and …

He shifted on the bed, turning his head toward the voice.

“hi, aunt dyney,” he murmured.

The whole room seemed to pause. Then Undyne chuckled.

“Well, he’s awake enough to know how much I hate that nickname,” she muttered, but with far more relief than irritation. She patted his shoulder, much gentler than usual. “How you feeling, punk?”

Sans groaned as he moved his fingers and toes, testing to make sure they were still there. “okay.”

No one said anything for a few seconds after that. It felt like they were waiting for something. Was he supposed to be talking? Moving around? Opening—

Oh. Right.

His sockets had never felt heavier, but with all the effort he could muster, his browbone pinched, he forced them open, bit by bit, wincing as the bright light flooded into his left eye. He could just make out blotches of color, yellow at the end of the bed, a much bigger white and purple form next to it, Undyne at his right, and his brother at his left. He opened his eyes a little more, and found the other skeletal shape on the other side of the room, by the wall, in the same black sweater, arms crossed over his chest and eyes locked on Sans.

Alphys stepped closer, up to Papyrus’s side, leaning over him and wringing her hands. “C-can you …?”

Sans’s SOUL clenched. He hadn’t been expecting anything. He knew that. He had told himself that at least a dozen times. He had been seeing out of only one eye for most of his life.

It didn’t change how dark his right eye felt now.

He let out a long breath that trembled despite all he did to hold it steady.

“no.”

His vision was still blurry, but he didn’t need to see to feel the air in the room thicken, to hear the faint exhales of disbelief, of grief, and one of anger—the same one that turned to Gaster with her teeth clenched. Though Sans could see almost nothing of Gaster himself, he swore he saw his shoulders fall and his head tilt away, the smallest gestures that had meant too much for too long for Sans to ignore.

Asgore shook his head, closing his eye. “Sans … I’m sorry …”

“WAIT.”

Everyone’s eyes snapped to Papyrus, who was climbing onto the bed and sitting just next to Sans, leaning forward so he could look down at his face. He was right there, and suddenly Sans wanted to get away, far away, away from everyone and everything, and he turned his head to stare at the wall and pretended his right eye wasn’t as dark as it had been for months. As dark as it would always be.

“SANS,” Papyrus said, far more adamant than pained. “BROTHER, LOOK AT ME.”

Sans hesitated. But a second later, his brother put his hands on his cheekbones and forced his face forward, staring down at him with the same concern, the same determination, that Sans had seen that day in the cell. And again, he was there, sitting in the corner, holding back tears as he felt the cold emptiness of his right eye.

But this wasn’t the cell.

There were people here, other people, and there were no bandages around Sans’s head, and he was wearing his favorite sweater, and the bed was soft underneath him and—

His brother’s eyes began to glow. Bright orange, warm and soothing, just like they did whenever Sans had a nightmare or felt sad or angry or scared or even a little bit off. Something deep inside Sans relaxed, and with a shuddering breath, he let his own eye light up in return.

Then he froze.

Papyrus froze.

The whole room seemed to stop, the world stilling as Sans stared up.

Because his left eye was glowing.

And so was his right.

A hum spread through his entire body, relaxing the tension he hadn’t even felt building up, the tension that had lingered for more than a year now, tension he had never been able to shake. He sunk back into the mattress and stared up into his brother’s face, watching his orange sockets grow, watching his mouth open before curving into a slow, ever-widening smile.

Watching the tears brim at the corners of his sockets.

Watching the orange in his eyes flicker to pale, overwhelming green.

Sans didn’t know whether it was his brother’s tears or his own on his cheekbones. And he didn’t care. Both of them were crying, sobs tearing from their throat, it hurt, but it was the best pain Sans had ever felt. Papyrus’s fingers squeezed his shoulders, smiling so big now it barely fit on his skull, glowing such a bright green it made the whole room light up.

And Sans glowed right back.

Papyrus yanked him up and into his arms, squeezing him so tight it hurt, and Sans wrapped his arms around his brother, nestled his head under his chin, and let himself cry. He didn’t care that people were watching. He didn’t care about their happy, relieved laughter or their quiet chatter or even the glimpses he got of Gaster, standing on the other side of the room, watching them with a face Sans couldn’t read.

The glow in his eyes, somewhere between blue and green, soothed nearly every worry he had ever had, and his brother took care of the rest.

“I LOVE YOU,” Papyrus whispered, cradling his skull with one hand as tears dripped off his jaw.

Sans pressed closer. “i love you, too.”

They were safe. They were together. They were surrounded by three people who cared about them, three people who promised to keep them safe. Three people who had yet to break that promise, no matter how many times Sans had expected it.

And no one—not even the fourth person—could take that away.

Sans cried, and his brother cried, and they hugged and laughed and glowed.

And for the first time Sans could remember, he truly believed that one way or another, everything was going to be alright.

Chapter Text

Sometimes Gaster wondered how criminals had been treated in monster society before the war.

Or, rather, before Asgore became king. Because though he had been king a very long time, he hadn’t lived forever—or at least Gaster was fairly sure he hadn’t. Someone had to have ruled before him. Had they been half as merciful? Had they locked dangerous, violent criminals away only to give them more and more “privileges” out of what Gaster could only guess was pity?

Had they been so eager to view the criminal as reformed that one apparent good deed was enough to win back every aspect of freedom except freedom itself?

Gaster doubted Asgore wanted to talk about it. So perhaps he would never know.

He supposed he didn’t have anything to complain about. He had been moved to the largest unoccupied suite in the castle, with a lab attached that allowed for a good semblance of the level of work he had once done. No living test subjects, of course, he was well aware he would never be allowed that—and the fact that he had used them so many times before without anyone knowing continued to make Asgore paranoid—but he had most of his most important equipment brought up from his lab, and twice already, he had been let out to visit the Core and help Dr. Alphys with problems that were difficult to solve remotely. Asgore had even hinted that with another month of “good behavior,” he might take him out on tours of the rest of the Underground, to “stretch his legs” and “see the sights” and all that.

Things weren’t going to get much better than this. Gaster would never be free again. Even if Asgore had a bout of insanity and decided to let him out of his makeshift “prison” completely, enough rumors had spread about what he had done to destroy the life he had before. People would never again look up to him as the esteemed Royal Scientist. Or esteemed anything else.

But he chosen his path. He had known from the beginning there would be no forgiveness.

And there had been a frankly ridiculous amount of forgiveness anyway.

He had been busier lately, working on projects the king had given him—not with the order of completing them, but with the opportunity to help if he wanted something to do, and Gaster wasn’t about to say no to something that kept him occupied. So he hardly noticed when the clock struck four, until he heard the knock on the door to his lab, and turned just in time to see it open.

But instead of the usual guard—or any of the guards—Alphys was the one to step inside.

Gaster frowned, browbone furrowed, as he watched her struggle to get through the door with her hands full of a large serving tray, holding the door open with her foot until she could let it fall shut. Her eyes fell at once on him.

For a second, just a second, she froze, like she had ever time before.

Then the tension began to melt away. Not all of it, but some. Alphys stood up straight, looking a good six inches taller than he had always assumed.

“Hi,” she said, a little louder than usual, her smile a bit more relaxed. She glanced down at the tray in her hands, then held it out further. “I b-brought some stuff for you.”

Gaster didn’t respond. Alphys crossed the room toward the little table, not stumbling once, and set the tray down there.

“Asgore s-says they’re chocolate chip with p-peanut butter.”

She looked at him again, smiling wider, even if he still detected that hint of hesitance, that old hurt, like a scar, in the back of her eyes.

“You don’t have more important work to do than deliver food to prisoners?” he asked, though without any malice.

He had thought she might flinch anyway, but her smile never wavered.

“I’m off today, a-actually.”

She glanced again at the steaming teapot and large plate of cookies on the tray, but didn’t touch them. Gaster looked away, but made a vague gesture toward the table with one of his real hands as his magical ones began to sign again.

“You can have some, if you like.”

This time, Alphys did tense. “A-are you sure? I mean, t-they’re your cookies …”

“Asgore gives me far too many to eat by myself,” he replied.

Alphys hesitated, but her eyes kept drifting toward the cookies, and finally, she smiled again.

“W-well … okay! Thank you!” She picked one from the top of the pile and took a bite. Her whole face lit up as she chewed. “Wow, these are g-good!”

She shoved the rest of the cookie in her mouth, making occasional noises of appreciation before finally swallowing. She came very close to reaching for another, then paused and looked to Gaster again, her uncertainty returning.

“Don’t you w-want some? Asgore sent them f-for you …”

“I’m not hungry,” Gaster said. It was true enough, even though he had eaten sweets plenty of times when he wasn’t hungry before—and forgotten to eat when he was hungry more than that. “I’ll have them later.”

Alphys tilted her head, brow furrowed, but finally nodded, even though he could tell she didn’t quite believe him. “Okay.”

She took another cookie, and as she broke his gaze, he found his own drifting back to her.

She looked at him differently now. With every visit, that became more and more apparent. She was still frightened of him. He doubted that would ever change. But there was hope behind that fear, familiar hope, hope that made him look away within seconds of her meeting his eyes. Hope that now refused to leave even on the days he wouldn’t speak to her at all.

He usually spoke.

If nothing else, Alphys was always good conversation.

“Oh!” His head snapped up, just in time to see her digging through the shoulder bag hanging at her side. “I have something else for you.”

Gaster’s browbone creased, but before he could ask, she took out what looked to be two slightly crumpled white envelopes. She held them out toward him.

“What are those?” he asked.

If she noticed the slight distaste in his tone, she said nothing about it. “Letters.”

He came very close to asking who the hell would be sending him letters.

Then he looked at her face, at the fondness in her eyes, and she didn’t need to say a thing.

She held them out a little further, her smile a little more expectant, a little more hopeful. She might not be Undyne—Undyne probably would have thrown the letters in his face hard enough to end up in his eyesocket—but Alphys could be stubborn in her own way. There was no point trying to deny her.

Gaster snatched up the envelopes, doing his best not to focus on the handwriting on the back of each. He set one on his desk and tore the other one open, pausing for a moment with the paper in his hands before he unfolded it and began to read.

DEAR GASTER,

HELLO! I HOPE YOU’RE DOING WELL. I’VE NEVER WRITTEN A LETTER BEFORE BUT RUBY SAYS MY HANDWRITING HAS GOTTEN A LOT BETTER, SO I WANTED TO GIVE IT A TRY. SHE ALSO TOLD ME THE SORTS OF THINGS YOU SAY IN A LETTER, BUT MOST OF THOSE DON’T SEEM LIKE THINGS YOU’D WANT TO TALK ABOUT IF YOU WERE HERE. I KNOW YOU DON’T LIKE TO TALK ABOUT MUCH WITH ME, BUT I THINK YOU’D NOT LIKE THOSE THINGS EVEN MORE. SO I’LL TALK ABOUT OTHER THINGS INSTEAD.

MOSTLY I’M WRITING TO SAY THANK YOU, BECAUSE YOU LEFT BEFORE I COULD SAY IT IN PERSON. MY BROTHER IS VERY, VERY HAPPY THAT HIS EYE IS FIXED. HE DOESN’T SAY IT BUT I KNOW HE FEELS A LOT BETTER NOW. I’M HAPPIER, TOO, AND SO ARE RUBY AND ALLANDY, BECAUSE SANS IS HAPPY AND TALKS TO THEM MORE AND HE DOES MORE STUFF WITH THEM. HE EVEN LET RUBY GIVE HIM A HUG LAST WEEK! I THINK YOU MADE A LOT OF PEOPLE REALLY HAPPY. I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT!

ANYWAY, I’M RUNNING OUT OF PAPER, SO I’LL STOP WRITING NOW. THANK YOU SO SO SO SO MUCH AGAIN. I HOPE WE CAN VISIT YOU SOMETIME. RUBY MAKES REALLY GOOD COOKIES, WE CAN BRING SOME OF THOSE WITH US, AND PUZZLES! AND UNCLE ASGORE SAYS MAYBE YOU COULD VISIT US IF YOU WANTED AND RUBY AND ALLANDY SAY IT’S OKAY AND BOTH ME AND SANS WANT YOU TO.

THAT’S IT. RUBY DIDN’T TELL ME HOW I WAS SUPPOSED TO END THE LETTER SO I’LL JUST SAY GOODBYE. GOODBYE!

SINCERELY,

WARMEST REGARDS,

LOVE,

PAPYRUS

P.S. THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY VERY MUCH!!

Gaster wanted to scoff. But then he remembered Alphys standing not two yards away from him, and he kept his face as blank as before.

He set the letter and its envelope down on his desk, then opened the second. It was a good deal shorter than the first, with small, messy handwriting Gaster could have recognized from across the room, even though, like Papyrus’s, it had improved since he saw it last.

my brother told me if i didnt write a letter on my own he’d write one for me. i didnt tell him you probly wouldnt even read these. he’s having fun, tho, so i dont really care if you see what he wrote or not.

this doesnt change anythin. one good thing doesnt mean you did any less bad stuff. you hurt my brother too many times for me to ever think of forgivin you. so dont start hopin for it. but i guess you wouldnt hope for somethin like that anyway.

gotta say im impressed, tho. aunt al told us what happened with the machine. didnt think you could screw somethin up that bad twice in a row, but youre just full of surprises, aint ya.

LOVE,

cold REGARDS,

sans

“Ruby says he’s doing better.”

Gaster didn’t look up from the letter, even though he had finished reading it almost half a minute ago. He didn’t need to look up. He could hear the smile in Alphys’s voice, the fidgeting of her feet, still anxious, but less so, as if something had softened her from the inside out.

“A … l-lot better,” she went on. “I-I mean, he’s still a little d-distant, but … he smiles a lot m-more. Real smiles. And h-he plays more with Papyrus and even some of the o-other kids in Snowdin.”

Gaster spared her a glance and found exactly the same smile he expected to see. Gentle and affectionate as she stared off the side, as if the two skeletons she had grown so attached to were standing right there.

She met his eyes and stiffened, but her smile didn’t quite disappear. “Papyrus is really happy about it.”

“So I gathered,” Gaster replied, laying down the second letter on top of the first.

He would throw them away once Alphys left. Or … no, he would throw them away. If he kept them, it would just be to keep a record of how their handwriting had improved with a year of practice. Perhaps he would never do any real experiments on them again, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take notes.

There would never be anything like them again, after all. He should document everything he could.

But as his hand left the paper, he couldn’t help but see 1—Sans staring back at him from the tube of MT solution, wincing as the pick dug into his skull, as Gaster explained that they were unique, that there was nothing else like them in the world, and that was why he continued with his research.

When he looked back up, Alphys was still smiling, even as she fidgeted more.

“I … I don’t k-know much about glowing, b-but … it seems like having his eye fixed r-really helped him,” she went on, turning her smile up, toward him, smiling at him. “He—”

“What are you doing, Dr. Alphys?”

The smile disappeared. She blinked. “W-what?”

“What are any of you doing?” he repeated. His teeth clenched, his browbone lowered, and his hand curled around the edge of the desk. “Perhaps it should be expected by this point, but that doesn’t make it any less nonsensical.”

Alphys just stared. Gaster huffed and turned away.

“I fixed his eye, yes. Partially. I fixed it after I was the one to break it, yet you all act like I created a miracle cure for some randomly injured monster.” He shook his head. “Despite his faults, at least … Sans is clever enough to realize that fixing one minuscule portion of my mistake doesn’t make up for it.”

He looked at her again, and found her still staring, but without the confused crease in her brow. He held himself a little taller, a little older, like he had looked down at those two so many times in the lab, and stepped toward her.

“I am a criminal, Dr. Alphys. I created two monsters for the sole purpose of using them as test subjects. I performed experiments you can’t even imagine on them without so much as flinching. I knew exactly what I was doing.”

He waited for her to back up, waited for her to tense or squeak as she had done early in her career, when she was nervous around him because he was famous and a genius and any other number of silly little things rather than one big glaring reason.

She didn’t. She just looked back.

Gaster gritted his teeth.

“So why are you all so determined to forgive me?”

Silence. After ten seconds, he jerked his head away and stared at the opposite wall, forcing his hands to relax where they had curled into trembling fists at his sides. Control. That was what he had always prided himself on, wasn’t it? Self-control.

Control that kept him from letting Papyrus hold his hand. Control that kept him from stopping as they screamed, as they begged, as that tiny part within him that sounded suspiciously like Times repeated that this was wrong wrong wrong.

Control that let him tell himself that it was all worth it. That he was doing this for a reason.

Control that let him keep believing it, no matter how many times he had made them suffer just because he was curious.

“It’s not up to m-me … to decide whether you’re f-forgiven.”

Gaster looked back across the room, where Alphys still stood close to the table. To his surprise, she wasn’t staring at the floor or backing away, even though he could see her fidgeting hands and feet, the anxiety swirling behind her glasses.

His face tensed. “I hurt you, too.”

“N-not … not like t-them,” she replied, without hesitation, without trying to deny it. She pursed her lips, then relaxed them again. “If they can go through what they went through and even t-think of forgiving you … then w-who am I to not at least t-try?”

Gaster’s fingers twitched, but he forced himself not to look away.

“Sans doesn’t forgive me, and he never will.” He paused, shaking his head again. “And Papyrus is …”

He had about a dozen words that worked perfectly well in his head, but none of them felt right when they got to his mouth. So he just huffed and let his gaze drift down to the floor. The silence around him felt like a sound all in itself. The silence he had grown so used to in those moments in the lab after the bo—after they had gone to sleep, yet Gaster remained at his computer, watching them.

No matter how many times he tried, he had never come up with a good reason for staying, rather than going home and resting in his actual bed. Staying when there was no work to be done. When the cameras would record any suspicious activity should they wake up.

Staying, only to watch the evidence of how far he had gone.

How far he had fallen.

What he had lost. What he had willingly given up.

What he could have had if he had made one different choice.

“I’m not s-stupid.”

Gaster’s head snapped up, and on some long-forgotten reflex, he found himself ready to tell her that of course she wasn’t stupid, she had the degree to prove it, the only thing that was stupid was the fact that she needed people to tell her she wasn’t stupid.

Then he saw the resolute stare, confident and sure, and went silent before he could get out a word.

“I know S-Sans … Sans couldn’t take most of the … w-worst things you did,” she went on, glancing away with each word, as if she still didn’t want to acknowledge the facts of his past actions out loud. “I know … y-you … hurt P-Papyrus the m-most.”

Gaster considered looking away, sparing himself the sight of her blatant discomfort, but then Sans’s words echoed in his head—he’s braver than you could ever be—and despite how ridiculous the reasoning was, he kept his eyes ahead.

And after a moment, Alphys looked back.

“He’s not s-stupid either,” she said, more assured. More pained. “He knows what you d-did.”

Gaster huffed. “Clearly he doesn’t. Not if he still acts as if I deserve another chance.”

She stopped fidgeting at that, and just looked at him. Alphys had always been easy to read, but for the first time Gaster stared right at her and had no idea what was going through her head. Which one of about a dozen possible emotions were flitting across her face.

Something in her eyes softened, and suddenly she looked very sad.

“You d-don’t get to decide whether you’re forgiven either.”

And Gaster didn’t care if it meant he wasn’t brave. He had never cared what Sans thought, and he wasn’t going to start now. He looked away.

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Gaster stared at the machines that made up his new lab. The lab Asgore said he had “earned.” The lab that allowed him to do things that would really help monsterkind, even if he would never have the sort of privileges necessary to make major improvements. He would never break the Barrier. He would never get them out.

Yet for the first time, as that realization hit him, instead of imagining everyone he had ever known or cared about trapped Underground, all he could see in his mind was two small skeletons in striped sweaters, playing in the snow.

And no matter how hard he pushed the thought to the side, it always came back.

At last, he looked up, and found Alphys still looking at him, the tension and the sadness from earlier almost entire gone.

“I-I’ve been l-looking into some upgrades for the Core,” she went on, with a soft smile that barely looked nervous at all. “Can you c-come out next week and s-see what you think?”

It would have been so easy to make some acerbic comment about how he had no choice, about how he certainly didn’t have anything else to do, or even something about actually getting a say in the care of the machine he designed in the first place.

But even though all those comments and more were right on the tip of his teeth, he found himself nodding before any of them could come out.

“I’ll be there.”

It shouldn’t have made his chest feel so light to see her smile brighten. Not to where it had been before—it would never be there again—but closer than he had seen it in more than a year.

She nodded, but didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

A minute later, she was gone, leaving him alone once again in his lab with a tray of quickly-cooling tea and chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. Gaster stood there for a good minute before he stepped forward, took one of the teacups, and poured himself some of the tea. If Asgore was going to send it up every day, regardless of whether he was there to join him, Gaster might as well drink it.

He bit into one of the cookies, and as he chewed, his eyes drifted back to the desk, where the two letters still lay.

There was a trash can right by the wall. He threw in pieces of paper all the time, and the guard who picked it up wouldn’t know the difference. Asgore probably didn’t even know that they had sent letters, and he doubted Alphys would bring it up. No one would ever know if he threw them away and never thought of them again.

He stepped forward, toward his desk, his free hand out to grab them and toss them out.

Then he paused.

The paper, previously folded, had curled up again, hiding most of the wording from view. Everything but the very bottom of the letters, with two names, one scrawled in as an afterthought, and the other formed as carefully as blown glass.

Gaster lifted both pieces of paper in one hand.

He swallowed the rest of the cookie.

And he folded the letters up, opened one of the desk drawers, and tucked them far in the back.

No one would know if threw them out. And no one would know if he kept them. Just to document the progress they had made in their handwriting.

Perhaps he could even convince Asgore to let him go through his old notes. The early practice sheets of the alphabet had to be in there somewhere. After all, if he was documenting their current abilities, he would have to have a record of where they had begun. That was all. They were no longer his test subjects, and there would be no more experiments. But if they kept sending letters, he could at least keep an eye on how quickly this one skill progressed.

He closed the drawer, just a bit more gently than usual, then returned to the table to grab his cup of tea and another two cookies.

It was Friday, and if he was going out to the Core next week to look at potential upgrades, he had to make sure he was completely up to date on what had been done in his absence. If he couldn’t get everyone out of here, he would at least make sure the rest of their stay was the best it could possibly be.

Despite it all, he was still Dr. W.D. Gaster.

And he was still determined.

Chapter Text

Papyrus had gotten her a thick new coat for her birthday.

Or, more specifically, a thick coat, a set of gloves, fluffy socks, and a hat. And well, none of them were really new, but they didn’t have any obvious stains or holes in them, and Allandy seemed to have stitched up some of the fraying edges, and all in all, it was probably the best gift Alphys had ever received.

Especially given that she used it almost every day.

She had taken to visiting more often since Sans’s … procedure, and even though she knew, now more than a month later, that he had completely recovered, and there was nothing to worry about, she had gotten into the habit, and she wasn’t about to break it now.

Besides, there weren’t that many people who Ruby and Allandy felt comfortable asking to babysit, and though they did their best to be home with the boys as much as possible, they had taken on parenthood rather quickly. Parenthood with two kids coming from a … difficult situation, with just as many issues they barely knew how to handle, but handled beautifully anyway.

Sans and Papyrus were two of the best kids she had ever met, and she was happy to help out.

Even if it meant braving the freezing weather of Snowdin nearly every day.

She had to shake her hand a few times to get rid of the numbness enough to knock once she reached the front porch, but the door flew open the second her hand touched the wood.

And a second later, Papyrus had her in his arms, squeezing her so tight she could barely breathe.

It was the same greeting she had received every visit for more than a year now, and she didn’t think she would ever get tired of it.

She almost couldn’t make out what he was saying as he grabbed her hand and dragged her through the house. She managed a greeting to Ruby and Allandy—still getting ready for their afternoon out—before she was jerked out of the living room and down the hall toward the boys’ bedroom. Apparently Allandy had bought them some new toys that morning, and he and Sans had spent every free minute playing with them.

“SEE! THIS ONE SPINS LIKE THE OTHER SPINNY THING, EXCEPT IT’S SMALLER!”

“and this one lights up when you toss it in the air.”

“OH! AND THIS ONE’S KIND OF SQUISHY, BUT YOU CAN MAKE IT INTO ALL THESE DIFFERENT SHAPES!”

“this one sticks to the fridge!”

Maybe she should have gotten used to seeing them smile by now. But she hadn’t. She was beginning to think she never would.

Maybe that was a good thing.

It wasn’t something she ever wanted to take for granted.

Ruby poked her head in a minute later to say goodbye to the boys, and it was possibly an even more welcome sight to find Sans accepting a hug from her and Allandy before they set off. He was still a little stiff when they put their arms around him, but he didn’t flinch, and he didn’t pull away.

It was progress. And at this point, progress was really the best she could ask for.

After that, Ruby and Allandy slipped out of the house, and Sans and Papyrus returned to showing her all their toys and how to play with them. Alphys found herself relaxing far more than she usually did around other people. Sure, social interaction still wasn’t … totally her thing. But the boys were nice, and she was comfortable around them, and frankly, after her most recent visit to the castle, she was happy to be around two people who actually smiled when she came into the room.

Even if Dr. Gaster had agreed to come out and work on the Core with her, she doubted he was going to be all that pleased with the time came to do it.

Still, he had agreed, and she tried to be happy with that much.

They moved to the living room after a while, and at Papyrus’s insistence, had tea and some of the cookies Ruby had baked the day before. Papyrus didn’t know how to cook, but Allandy was almost as good at making tea as Asgore, and had taught him several months ago. It wasn’t quite perfect, but for a kid his age—who had never had experience making anything until recently—Alphys couldn’t have asked for anything better.

As usual, she sat in the armchair while the boys sat on the couch, all three of them sipping their slightly over-sugared tea and munching on the cookies that hadn’t gone stale despite sitting out all night. Sans settled back against the cushions, tea in both hands, while Papyrus sat right on the edge of the couch.

“SO WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING LATELY, AUNT AL?”

Alphys blinked at the formality, but found herself smiling. Papyrus’s expression was no less genuine than it always was, his cup held carefully as he leaned forward in his seat.

“O-oh, um … just the usual,” she said with a shrug. “Work on the C-Core. R-Royal Scientist stuff. A-and I w-went to the garbage d-dump with Undyne to get supplies.”

“THAT SOUNDS FUN!” Papyrus replied, his eyes lighting up with far more enthusiasm than she would have expected for a kid talking about the garbage dump. Had he been before? Maybe she should ask Ruby and Allandy if she could take the boys. They were sure to find some things they liked there.

She kept smiling, and nodded.

“YOU AND AUNT UNDYNE ALWAYS HAVE FUN TOGETHER,” Papyrus added.

Alphys’s smile slipped, her eyes dropping to the floor. Her smile returned only a few seconds later, and she set her tea cup onto the coffee table in front of her to make sure she didn’t drop it when her hands began to sweat.

“Y-yeah, we … we do.”

Papyrus was still grinning. “SHE’S NICE.”

Alphys cleared her throat.

“S-she is,” she muttered, her smile twitching wider and her cheeks a bit warmer than they normally would have been. From his spot against the cushions, she swore Sans was smirking. She sat up straighter. “A-and I know she l-loves seeing you, t-too. I a-actually asked her if she wanted to c-come by later t-this week to help me b-babysit.”

Even though she had been expecting it, it didn’t stop her chest from warming when both boys’ eyes lit up, and Papyrus’s mouth spread into a smile so wide it almost split his face.

“DID SHE SAY YES?”

Alphys grinned and gave a small nod.

Papyrus almost bounced off the couch, hands clasped together in utter joy.

“OH YAY!” he squealed, exchanging a quick, ecstatic grin with Sans before turning back to Alphys. “WE CAN FINISH THAT ANIME WE STARTED WATCHING LAST TIME SHE CAME OVER!”

Alphys blinked, her smile slipping again, but managed another nod. “Uh … s-sure.”

She still wasn’t sure exactly what show Undyne had been watching with them. Undyne had gotten it out of her collection, but Alphys had never seen it before, and only watched a few clips, when she had poked her head into the living room while working in the kitchen. From what she had overheard the rest of the time, the show was … a bit on the adult side for children as young as the boys. Nothing graphic, but if Alphys was blushing that much just from what she could translate from Japanese without reading the subtitles, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know how much innuendo there actually was.

The boys hadn’t seemed bothered by it, and Ruby and Allandy hadn’t mentioned them making dirty jokes or asking unusual questions since. She wouldn’t be surprised if all the jokes went right over their heads. But maybe she should bring a few of her own anime over—the kid-friendly ones—just in case.

At least it hadn’t been anything violent.

“ARE YOU GOING TO SEE HER BEFORE THAT?”

Alphys jerked her head up. Sans was giving her a concerned look, while Papyrus just watched her with a tilted head, wide, eager eyes, and his usual smile.

Then his words clicked, and she blinked, her cheeks slightly pink.

“W-well, um … y-yeah,” she managed, clearing her throat and shifting in her seat. “We were going to w-watch something together tonight, actually.”

Papyrus’s smile grew so wide it looked uncomfortable. Even Sans’s smile twitched up a bit, though it was hard to tell, given that his smile never fully disappeared.

“THAT’S GOOD. I’M GLAD YOU’RE SPENDING MORE TIME TOGETHER.”

Alphys chuckled and looked away, though she knew no amount of moving around would hide her growing blush. She picked up her teacup from the table and took a long sip, even though it was still a little too hot to drink. She had never minded hot liquids, and a burnt tongue would heal in a few days. And it was good tea. Very good tea. That was all that was important here, good tea, good tea and visiting the boys, she was fine, these were two kids, why should she be embarrassed talking about going to meet a friend to a couple of kids—

“YOU MAKE A REALLY GREAT COUPLE.”

Alphys choked on her tea.

She could see Papyrus pushing himself out of his seat to come help her, and she felt his hand patting her back as she struggled to breathe through the liquid in her windpipe. It took almost a minute before she managed to get more air into her lungs, and only once she had almost completely settled down did Papyrus return to sit with his brother, watching her with concerned eyes and a tilted head, while Sans’s face had twisted into something she would almost call amused.

“W-w-what?” she managed, her voice still slightly cracked.

And just like that, it was like her little choking incident had never happened. Papyrus broke out into the widest smile she had seen since she arrived, and probably wider still.

“A COUPLE. YOU WOULD BE REALLY CUTE TOGETHER,” he repeated. “THAT’S WHAT RUBY SAID. BUT I THINK SO, TOO! AND ALLANDY! AND SANS!”

“yup,” Sans agreed, and now that she took the time to look at it, she found that the expression on his face was very close to a smirk.

Her cheeks warmed, hotter and hotter until they burned like lava and she didn’t have to look in a mirror to guess the color of her face. She shook her head, so fast her glasses almost fell off her nose.

“Uh … uuuh … n-no, w-w-we’re n-not …” She cleared her throat and tried to sit up straighter, but found herself hunching over again, even as she waved her hands in front of her. “We’re j-just friends! That’s it! N-nothing else!”

She really wasn’t sure how Sans’s face was physically capable of holding a smile that wide.

“uh-huh.”

Alphys frowned. “S-Sans, I’m serious!”

“sure,” he replied, and really, she couldn’t blame him for not taking her seriously when her voice was shaking so hard.

“IT’S OKAY, AUNT AL!” Papyrus cut in as Alphys shifted in her seat, wondering how two little boys managed to fluster her so badly. “I THINK SHE LIKES YOU, TOO!”

“I-I …” Alphys ducked her head, biting her lip and fiddling with her hands in her lap. “S-she … she couldn’t … I m-mean, w-why would she like m-me? That r-ridiculous, s-she wouldn’t …”

She shook her head, squeezing her hands together before she let them go with a soft sigh.

“She’s w-way out of my league.”

She looked up a few seconds later to find Sans’s browbone furrowed and his head tilted to the side.

“what’s a league?”

Alphys opened her mouth, paused, and shook her head, pushing up her glasses on her snout where they had begun to slip down.

“N-nevermind,” she muttered, forcing her hands to still in her lap. “It’s … w-we’re not … we’re just f-friends. That’s it.”

Papyrus made a thoughtful face. “HMM …”

But despite their evident discontent with her answer, neither of the boys said anything else about it, and were happy to spend the rest of the afternoon playing with their toys and watching Sailor Moon.

Ruby and Allandy came back around seven that evening, and Alphys, to her delight, got hugs from both Papyrus and Sans before she stepped out the door. She took a moment to savor their wide smiles, their loose, casual postures, the little things that got better and better every time she came to see them.

It would be a long time before everything was truly okay. But for now, it was good enough.

She tugged her coat around her and started off toward home, the boys waving behind her, and only once she was a good ten feet away did she hear the door shut behind her.

*

As Allandy locked the door and shuffled off to the kitchen to help Ruby with dinner, Sans turned to his brother with the widest grin he had worn in weeks.

“you thinkin what i’m thinkin, bro?”

Papyrus frowned, like he did when Sans suggested pranking Aunt Bonnie when she came to visit. “I DON’T KNOW. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?”

“you know,” Sans muttered, lifting his browbone in a way he hoped would get the message across.

Papyrus frowned harder. Sans glanced at the door, and Papyrus followed his gaze. He blinked. Then his browbone rose, too.

“OH.” He looked back and forth between Sans and the door a few times, then quirked his head. “DO YOU THINK AUNT AL WOULD BE MAD? SHE DID SAY THEY WERE JUST FRIENDS.”

“you know that’s not true,” Sans replied. “you seen the way aunt dyney looks at her?”

“YEAH …”

Sans smiled wider. “they’ll like it. ‘sides, itll be fun.”

Papyrus hesitated, but Sans could see the smile twitching at his mouth, and a few seconds later, he let out a long, heavy sigh that didn’t quite mask his excitement.

“OKAY,” he said at last. “BUT IF WE’RE GOING TO DO THIS, WE’RE GOING TO THINK OF SOMETHING GOOD!”

Sans grinned so wide his cheekbones ached.

“we will, bro. we will.”

*

 Undyne prided herself on knowing people’s talents.

Ever since she had been accepted into the Royal Guard, it had so often fallen to her to decide which new recruit would be assigned to what job, and she had yet to place someone in a position that didn’t suit them perfectly.

The problem was that someone’s talents didn’t always correspond with what they wanted.

Papyrus was a talented fighter. A very talented fighter. He was one of the strongest monsters of his age—whatever the hell that age actually was—she had ever met, and she had no doubt that if he kept training, he could easily end up in the Guard by the time he was an adult. Probably highly-ranked, too. She would have been proud to count him as her right-hand man.

He was very good at fighting.

He just didn’t want to do it.

At all.

Not outside of training, at least.

“I DON’T WANT TO HURT ANYONE!” he finally shouted after the fifth time she tried to convince him to hit harder, to aim better, to make sure that he actually hit her rather than his bones flying right over her shoulder like they usually did.

She couldn’t bring herself to argue with him after that. She was surprised she had managed to argue with him at all. After what had happened … after what she had almost done to his brother …

… she couldn’t just tell him that no one would be getting hurt.

And besides, even if no one would be hurt now, that didn’t mean that she wasn’t intending for him to learn how to hurt people for real in the future.

Papyrus was a talented fighter, but he didn’t want to fight. And as much as she wanted to see him learn how to defend himself as skillfully as she knew he could, she wasn’t so oblivious as not to see that he was never going to fight back for real.

The relief in his eyes the day she told him that they would spend “training” days play-sparring rather than learning real combat was all she needed to know she had done the right thing.

He would be alright. He had people who loved him, people who would protect him, at his side almost without pause.

He could manage without learning how to do so by himself.

But only a week later, Sans approached her and asked if she would teach him to fight instead.

She had been … a little hesitant at first. She hadn’t paid much attention to the kid’s HP when she first met him, but looking at him a little closer … it was like fighting rice paper. One wrong move and she’d kill him.

One wrong move, like the one she had made before …

… she had come close to killing him once. And she wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.

But Sans had been insistent, and as tough as she was, saying no to either of those boys was one of the most challenging feats she had ever come across. So she found a compromise. She would teach Sans to fight, but she wouldn’t be the one to spar with him. Sans protested at this at first, at least until Papyrus agreed to fill in as a sparring partner, “AS LONG AS IT’S JUST PRETEND AND IT’S JUST ME AND MY BROTHER AND NEITHER OF US ARE REALLY TRYING TO HURT EACH OTHER.”

If there was one person she had learned was in control of his magic enough not to accidentally hurt someone, it was Papyrus.

It was embarrassing, in a way, that a kid had a skill like that and she didn’t. Especially given that it was a kid she couldn’t really train in combat. But it didn’t stop her being ridiculously proud.

She met with the boys once a week, at the castle, given that the castle had the most expansive training room where the boys could practice without worrying about hurting anyone or damaging any important property. If it also happened to be where Asgore lived, well, then it was just a nice perk that the boys got to see their favorite uncle more often than before.

And as much as he tried to avoid them, Undyne knew Asgore was happy to see them doing so well.

At first, she had been confused as to why he stayed away from them. They liked him. They didn’t blame him for anything that had happened, and she knew they would have said so if he ever gave them the chance. But the more time she spent with the boys, the more she understood why Asgore had yet to invite the boys over for cookies and tea.

Because no matter how much time she spent with them, she was rarely alone.

Not because Ruby and Allandy insisted on it. Undyne suspected that they would have gladly left the boys with her, at their house or anywhere else. Apparently she gave off just enough of a “responsible adult” aura to make them think she was a good person to leave their kids with. She still wasn’t sure what she thought about that.

But regardless, Undyne only trained the boys when Asgore was close by, and she usually only agreed to watch the kids if Alphys was around. There were exceptions, but there was something … comforting about the idea of having someone else around just in case something went wrong.

Someone who hadn’t come so close to killing one of the kids because she had gotten distracted.

That didn’t mean that other person had to be in the room all the time, though, and when it was Alphys and her, she usually wasn't. Alphys got along with both the boys, but she had far more in common with Sans, and at least half the time, the two would dive into their latest science or tech project while Undyne lounged around watching anime or made a snack. Sometimes Papyrus watched anime with her, sometimes he drew Sans and Alphys into a game, and on occasion, when Undyne had left the room, he wandered away from his usual babysitter and went to find her.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

And usually succeeded in scaring the crap out of her.

She doubted he had intended to surprise her, but still, Undyne spun around almost fast enough to make herself trip, blinking when she found Papyrus standing in the entrance to the kitchen, watching her with a tilted head. For a kid who could be so loud when he wanted to, he really did have a knack for sneaking up on her.

She glanced back at the ingredients she had laid out on the counter, then to Papyrus again.

“Oh, uh … I was gonna cook dinner for you guys,” she replied. “Anything you want?”

Papyrus’s eyes lit up, but rather than ask for cookies or macaroni and cheese, he scurried further into the kitchen and looked up at her with wide sockets and a bright smile. “CAN I HELP?”

Undyne blinked and glanced back at the pile of ingredients she had yet to sort through.

“Help me cook?”

“YEAH!” Papyrus stepped a little closer, looking up at the counter as if she were preparing an elaborate three-course meal, rather than just trying to see what this house had to eat. “RUBY COOKS A LOT BUT I NEVER HELPED HER BEFORE. CAN I HELP YOU?”

Undyne hesitated, then shrugged and broke into a wide grin. “Sure, why not? Get over here, punk!”

He was only a few steps away at this point, but he bounded closer, and any uncertainty she might have felt disappeared as she saw the beaming grin stretch all the way across his face.

He stood on his toes to look around at the ingredients she had out already, even though he was more than tall enough to see the counter perfectly well on flat feet. “WHAT ARE WE GONNA MAKE?”

“I dunno, what d’you wanna eat?”

“WHATEVER YOU COOK,” Papyrus replied. From anyone else, that might have sounded like sarcasm, but from Papyrus …

Undyne furrowed her brow in thought.

“Uh … well, spaghetti’s pretty easy. You wanna try that?”

She couldn’t tell if it was actually approval or just that same excitement that made Papyrus grin even wider than before. “OKAY!”

Undyne let a small smirk touch her lips.

It wasn’t like she had never made spaghetti before. She had … a couple of times. With … decent results. But there was something about Papyrus’s enthusiasm that made her own increase tenfold, and Undyne found herself moving the ingredients around with a bit more force than necessary. Which made Papyrus mimic her, which made her move them even more roughly, and on and on in a cycle she knew wasn’t going to end.

They were both grinning too wide to care.

Then the stove was on and the water was boiling much faster than usual, and when Papyrus slam-dunked the pasta into the pot like she told him, hot water went splattering all over the walls and floor. Once they went at the spaghetti with a couple of wooden spoons, almost all the water was gone from the pot in a minute.

“Stir stir stir!! Stir harder! The harder you stir the better it is!”

“STIR STIR STIR!”

“Stir the life out of it!!”

She probably should have noticed the flames licking a little too high underneath the pan. But in her defense, Papyrus’s eager, elated smile was just about the most distracting thing she had ever seen, and it was more than enough to distract her from the growing heat in the room.

It wasn’t until Alphys shrieked behind them that Undyne noticed the flames catching onto the wooden cabinets above their heads and spreading all along the walls.

Ruby and Allandy came home two hours later to a charred, wet kitchen, Alphys stuttering in the corner, Sans and Papyrus still gawking at the mess, and Undyne grinning sheepishly and insisting that she had repaired her own kitchen in less than a week, and one as small as theirs would be done even faster.

If she let Papyrus sign his name in the new paint before it dried, well … no one had to know.

*

Undyne had taken six months after the … incident … at the castle before she was comfortable babysitting the boys by herself.

She would come over to help Alphys babysit regularly, but it took her a good deal longer to agree to watch them on her own. She never said why. She didn’t need to. Alphys could see the look on her face when she watched the boys while their attention was somewhere else. She could see the pain that flashed across her face before she stuffed it away again.

She could see the guilt, the lingering fear, as her gaze shifted from Papyrus to Sans.

To the boy she had scared half to death, and the boy she could have killed.

Alphys had never blamed her. She hadn’t been there, of course, she had just heard the story, but she had never blamed Undyne for what had almost happened, and she was sure neither of the boys did either.

That didn’t help.

Even after Undyne agreed to babysit them by herself for the occasional evening, she still preferred for Alphys to be with them. When Alphys couldn’t be, she planned out the entire evening in advance, with more movies and games than they could use up in a week without sleeping. Maybe it was easier when the boys didn’t get much chance to just talk.

Well, it wasn’t like Alphys didn’t do the same thing.

Things had gotten easier lately. Sans’s more relaxed, pleasant demeanor seemed to have spread over to the rest of them, and even though Ruby had banned Undyne from doing more than opening the refrigerator since the cooking fiasco, the experience had apparently brought Undyne and Papyrus even closer than they already were.

Enough, apparently, to make Undyne comfortable watching them for three hours in the evening.

Though Alphys had still agreed to come by and join her as soon as she was finished in the lab. Which, in this case, was long after dark, after Snowdin had gone quiet and Alphys wasn’t sure whether she found the silence and the thick falling snow beautiful or creepy.

Ruby and Allandy wouldn’t even be gone for much longer, from what she understood, but she had said she would come by, so that was what she would do.

She wasn’t worried. Undyne may not have watched the boys by herself very much, but Alphys could tell, after all their joint babysitting sessions, that she knew what she was doing. She was good with the boys. With both of them, even if she seemed closer to Papyrus than Sans. She knew how to make them laugh, how to cheer them up if they were feeling a little down, what games to play that they enjoyed. How to make them specifically ask for her to come back, even if Ruby and Allandy weren’t going out.

Alphys had never seen Undyne around other kids, but she couldn’t help but wonder if she was as good with them as she was with the boys.

It made her wonder what it would be like to raise kids with her hersel—nope, nope, nope, nope, she was not thinking that, no, definitely not.

Her face was still burning when the house came into sight.

She fumbled with the key a few times, then spent a minute just getting it into the lock and turning until it clicked. She creaked the door open as quietly as possible—why didn’t they ever oil those hinges?—especially when she found the living room dark, lit only by the light of the TV, the volume turned down so low she couldn’t even make out what was playing.

She stepped inside, and when her eyes adjusted, it was to see Undyne on the couch, turned to face her, flashing her a quick smile before turning away again, staring at something just to her left. Alphys blinked a few more times before she noticed the two smaller, thin, white figures curled up against the arm of the couch, hugging one another in their sleep.

They were already in their pajamas, one of the throw blankets wrapped around them and what looked like a couch cushion tucked carefully behind their heads. It didn’t matter what she acted like around other people. It didn’t matter how she talked. Alphys may have never seen Undyne carefully tucking the boys in, but she had seen the evidence, enough times that Undyne couldn’t brush it off.

And though it took a few seconds for Alphys to catch it in the light of the TV, there was no way she could miss the faint smiles on the boys’ faces.

Or the gentle green glow of their closed eyes.

Alphys didn’t know how long she had been standing there, grinning like an idiot, when Undyne pushed herself off the couch. The springs creaked, and Alphys jolted, but the boys slept on, undisturbed, clinging to each other just as fervently in sleep as they did when they were awake.

Undyne crossed the room to stand at her side, and Alphys turned her attention back to her, looking up at her with a wide, giddy grin.

But Undyne wasn’t smiling.

Alphys had gotten fairly good at reading Undyne’s expressions in the year since they had first met. Granted, Undyne wasn’t a very hard person to read. She smiled when she was happy, and when she wasn’t happy … well, everyone could tell.

But this expression was subtle. For Undyne, at least. There was no shouting, no baring teeth, no spears manifesting in her hand. There was just a deep crease in the middle of her brow, and her lips pressed into a thin, tight line, and her hands curled into such tight fists that Alphys was almost afraid she would slice her own palms open with her fingernails.

For a second, Alphys was afraid that Undyne was mad at her. She couldn’t think of what she might have done, anything that would make Undyne that upset with her. But after a closer look, she found Undyne’s eyes not on her, but on the floor.

Shifting over her shoulder every few seconds, back to where the boys slept at the corner of the couch.

Alphys swallowed.

“Um … a-are you okay?”

Undyne looked up at her, stared for a few seconds, then faced the ground again, her lips parted to reveal gritted teeth.

“He hurt them,” she bit out.

Alphys stiffened. “W-what?” she asked, even though she didn’t need to.

Undyne didn’t look up this time. Her teeth clenched even harder, and her fists curled tighter, until they were trembling from the pressure.

“Doc—that—Gaster,” she managed, as if even the name left a bad taste in her mouth. “He hurt them.”

Alphys opened her mouth and let it hang there for a few seconds before forcing it shut. She swallowed hard.

“… yeah. H-he did.”

Undyne looked at the boys again, and even in the dim light, Alphys could see the way her expression changed the longer her eyes remained on them. Maybe she wasn’t comfortable being a regular babysitter. Maybe she would never accept that what had happened had been an accident, and no one was mad at her, and the boys wanted her around just as much as she wanted to be around them. But she couldn’t hide the affection that gleamed in her eyes as she stared at their peaceful faces, their tiny, fragile bodies. Their eyes, glowing, for only the second time Alphys had ever ever seen.

“He hurt them,” Undyne went on, snapping Alphys’s attention back to her. “He … I don’t even know half of all the stuff he did to them.”

Alphys tried to speak, but her voice wouldn’t work. Undyne shook her head, and though it might have been the gleam of the TV light, Alphys thought she saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

“He was right there. The whole time, he was right there, and none of us … I’m in the Royal Guard, and right under my nose, he was …”

She let out a long, shaky breath, and Alphys had no doubt that if the boys weren’t sleeping nearby, she would have screamed, or maybe grabbed one of the pieces of furniture and thrown it into the nearest wall. It was odd to see her so quietly angry. Holding herself back, when Undyne never held herself back. That was what Alphys liked about her. One of a lot of things, at least. She wasn’t afraid to be exactly who she was. She didn’t hide her feelings. She said what she was thinking, no matter how weird it was.

She wasn’t afraid.

She was everything Alphys wished she could be, even though she knew it was never going to happen.

Alphys let her eyes drift down to the floor, felt her chin touch her chest as she only just resisted the urge to curl up and pretend she could disappear into thin air.

“I saw him all the t-time,” she murmured, under her breath, barely loud enough for Undyne to make out, though Alphys was sure she could still hear it. She swallowed. “I-I … I knew s-something was wrong, but …”

She trailed off, whatever words she had had ready falling apart in her head. Her hands clenched together near her middle.

“You liked him.”

It came so quietly, so quickly, that for a second Alphys couldn’t be sure whether it was Undyne who had said it at all. She jerked her head up, and found two familiar eyes locked on her, her face, for the first time Alphys could remember, completely unreadable.

“W-what?” Alphys managed.

“You admired him,” Undyne repeated, and now Alphys could hear it, the edge, the bite, slipping into her voice bit by bit. Her eyes hardened. “I see the way you look at him, sometimes. Like … like you think he’s still the person you thought he was. Like you think he can be better.”

Alphys took a step back, her soul pounding in her chest, and hard as she tried, she couldn’t ignore the twinge of accusation in the words.

“Like you still admire him,” Undyne went on, her teeth clenched. “Even after all of that.”

“I d-don’t admire him!” Alphys forced out, but still took another step back, bringing her shoulders closer.

Undyne’s eyes burned into her like twin spears, and Alphys had never felt quite so small. “You go to visit him all the time, you work with him on the Core, and every time you give your report, it’s always ‘Dr. Gaster said this, Dr. Gaster said that,’ well, guess what, Alphys, your ‘Dr. Gaster’ tortured two little kids, two innocent little kids, those little kids, he’s not your idol, I don’t know how you can take a single word of what he says seriously, how can you—”

Then she stopped.

She looked at Alphys. She looked across the room, at the boys still sleeping on the couch. And she looked at herself, at her hands clenched into fists at her sides, feeling the twisting of her face before it softened a second later into something like regret.

She winced and jerked her head away, her eyes squeezed shut.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, and Alphys could hear the pain in her voice as easily as she could see it on her face. She forced her eyes back open, peering down at Alphys with a crease in her brow. “You didn’t do anything.”

Alphys opened her mouth to protest, trying to shake her head, but her body wouldn’t move, and the words refused to come out. Finally, she gave up, and Undyne let out a breath that almost counted as a sigh.

“You couldn’t have known. You knew him before. You … you didn’t know any more than the rest of us,” she went on. Her eyes fell to the ground in front of her. “If there’s anyone I should be yelling at, it’s me.”

“Y-you didn’t do anything!” Alphys insisted, her voice cracking, but she didn’t care how she sounded as long as the message got through.

Undyne looked up, face carefully blank. “Exactly.”

It took a second for the words to register, but once they did Alphys found herself floundering again, standing up straight even as she fought the impulse to hunch down.

“B-but … you … you d-didn’t know …”

She had hoped that it might be at least a little reassuring, but Undyne just kept staring at the floor, her face emptier than Alphys had seen it since the day they first met.

“Yeah,” she huffed, her mouth pressing into a thin line. “None of us did.”

Alphys opened her mouth, but this time, it took her only a second to close it again. She let her own eyes drift down to her feet, and felt her shoulders slump.

Half an hour later, Ruby and Allandy returned home, and Alphys and Undyne slipped out of the house and walked back toward Waterfall without a word.

Chapter Text

“AUNT UNDYNE, ARE YOU OKAY?”

It was the fifth time Papyrus had asked that since they crossed the bridge from Waterfall, and for the fifth time, Undyne didn’t respond.

And for the fifth time, Sans handed her one of the canteens they had brought with them, and Undyne dumped half of it on her head before chugging the rest.

She really, really hated Hotland.

Alphys knew that, and normally, Undyne knew she wouldn’t have asked her to come out there to meet her. But apparently she was tied up at the Core at the moment, and though Undyne had been happy to watch the boys for the past few hours, she had already promised to take over training some of the new recruits for the Guard, and frankly she wasn’t too comfortable taking the boys along for anything that would involve throwing spears—especially when more than one person was doing the spear-throwing. So Alphys had agreed to take over around two in the afternoon, keeping the boys with her while she finished up one of her current assignments on the Core before she took them back to the house to watch them for the rest of the day.

Hotland was uncomfortable, but Undyne wasn’t about to ask Alphys to step away from important Royal Scientist work just because she didn’t want to deal with a little bit of heat.

She was a Royal Guard, after all. She could kick heat’s butt.

Though it would be easier if heat had a butt to kick.

Sans handed her another canteen as they neared the entrance to the Core. Undyne had only been here a handful of times—usually, if she passed through Hotland, it was either straight to Alphys’s lab or on her way to the Capital—but she was pretty good with directions, and the boys seemed to have the way memorized anyway. Of course, the sheer amount of metal around her just made things even hotter, and she found the water she had dumped on her head completely evaporated only seconds later.

Hopefully there was a faucet somewhere around here. She would need to refill those canteens before she started back.

The boys picked up their pace as they got closer, though they never walked more than a few steps ahead of her, always glancing over their shoulders to make sure they hadn’t lost her. It was embarrassing, in a way, even if it was touching.

She was a Royal Guard. She was supposed to be watching out for them.

But these boys had never done what people expected them to do. They were children, and sometimes, they would actually act like children. But they would never be normal children. They would never look at the world the same way other kids did, the same way she had when she was a little punk like they were. They could goof off and laugh and smile and play as if they were no different than anyone else. But it would never be true.

It didn’t make it any easier for her to accept.

They stepped into the Core and Undyne forced herself to focus.

Whoever designed this really had no common sense when it came to laying things out. Sure, she appreciated a good puzzle—sort of, occasionally, not very often—but building this whole place like one? And apparently everything was shifting around at random and half the time, the map she had looked at wouldn’t even be accurate. How did Alphys work in this place? What idiot had the idea to—

Oh. Right. She knew exactly what idiot had had the idea to make this place so ridiculous.

Asgore didn’t like her calling him an idiot out loud, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to hold back in her own head. Smart people could be idiots, too.

“uh, i think we were s’posed to go left there.

Undyne jolted out of her thoughts, stopped, and turned to Sans, who was standing a few feet behind her and pointing over his shoulder at a hallway they had just passed. A tiny part of her wanted to snap at him that she knew what she was doing, but then she looked a little closer, noticing his quiet concern, and she found herself wondering how many times in his life this kid had been taken seriously.

“Thanks,” she muttered. Maybe it didn’t sound as sincere as she wanted it to, but she still saw Papyrus grinning out of the corner of her eye.

As it turned out, Sans was right, and within a few minutes, Undyne saw the center of the Core coming up. The tension she hadn’t even noticed in her shoulders slipped away. Well, finally. Sure, she still had to walk the whole way back, and maybe it would be a bit more difficult now that she was already tired and wouldn’t have the boys around to hand her water bottles and redirect her when she got lost, but at least she would be heading away from the heat, rather than toward it.

Despite her exhaustion, she picked up her pace, and Sans and Papyrus almost had to break into a jog to keep up with her.

They kept going, and within a minute, the boys had turned it into a slow-paced race, outpacing each other in turns, giggling at her sides. It didn’t last long—Sans’s stamina was still about the worst she had ever seen—but they stayed close after that, smiling, chatting with each other, hopping over the cracks in the metal.

Like kids. Ordinary kids.

That really shouldn’t have been as shocking as it was.

It was easy enough to find her way without looking where she was going, and she allowed herself the luxury of just watching them, turning from side to side and taking in their smiling, relaxed faces. They would never forget what happened to them. They would never be completely ordinary children. But they could pretend. For a little while, at least they could pretend.

She watched them until she neared the guard rails up ahead, blocking off what had once been a straight drop into the lava below. Undyne had thought it was kind of hardcore, but apparently there had been safety complaints, and she had to admit, coming here with two kids beside her, it wasn’t a bad idea.

She turned to the right, Sans and Papyrus at her sides, giggling at some joke she had missed.

Then she looked ahead and froze.

There were two people standing at the other end of the walkway that led around one side of the Core. One leaning against the furthest part of the guard rail, and one a little closer, turning to face her just as she faced him.

The same glasses taped to his head. The same bad eye. The same startled, blank look she had seen almost every time they met.

Him.

Him.

It had been a month since she had seen him. She had only met him one time before … that time, and after the investigation, Asgore had insisted she not be one of the Guards to keep an eye on him, even though she had offered. Offered at least ten times, because even though she trusted the other Guards, she still didn’t trust anyone to do the job as well as she could.

Or maybe she had just wanted another opportunity to threaten the old sicko.

But Asgore had insisted her “talents were better used elsewhere,” so Undyne had relented, and aside from brief glimpses in the castle, the last time she had seen him had been during Sans’s procedure, and immediately afterward, when he was being escorted back to what Asgore called his “cell.”

He hadn’t changed. He wore the same loose black sweater and dark pants, his glasses still taped to his skull. He still looked just as harmless, just as much of an awkward little nerd as he had the first time she saw him.

And he was right there.

Staring at her.

Staring at the boys, who had both gone stiff as rocks.

Undyne wanted to kill him.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. It was just supposed to be Alphys, that was it, meeting Alphys, the boys weren’t even nervous about visiting Hotland nowadays, everything was fine and Gaster was meant to stay locked up and Undyne knew they let him out sometimes to work on the Core but why did it have to be today—

She jerked her head just in time to see Alphys turn the corner around the metal wall, right into view, her attention on Gaster, her mouth already open from whatever she was about to say.

Her eyes gleaming.

Her lips turned into something that was almost a smile.

Then she stopped.

Her brow furrowed.

And she turned.

She stared at Undyne. Then at Gaster. Then at the boys.

It was like she had just watched someone fall into the Core, after her own flailing movements had pushed them.

“U-Undyne …” she stammered out, barely louder than a breath, but somehow her voice carried over the sounds of the machinery around her. She shifted from foot to foot, eyes flicking between each of them, growing wider by the second. “I … I d-didn’t think you’d be here for a-a while, I …”

She hunted for something to say after that, but apparently, no words came. She looked for all the world like she was going to turn around and run out of here as quickly as possible. She could have. There was a guard right there, after all. And it wasn’t like Undyne would have expected Alphys to throw herself between Gaster and the boys anyway.

But Alphys didn’t move.

She floundered, she stuttered, she fidgeted, but she did not run away.

And all of them just stood there, waiting for someone else to make the first move.

“UM … HELLO.”

Undyne turned to find Papyrus stepping out of her makeshift cover. She gritted her teeth and bit back the urge to snap at him to get behind her.

They were in public. Would Gaster do anything? Could Gaster do anything?

She knew he was stronger than he looked. She had enough experience in combat to know that just because he looked like a harmless wimpy nerd, that didn’t mean he was.

And he had more than proved it.

But there was no fear in Papyrus’s eyes, and hardly any hesitation. Even when he got no response, even when Gaster just stared, Papyrus smiled and stepped forward before Undyne could tell him to stay put.

“IT’S GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN!” he continued, while Gaster stared like he might stare at someone about to attack him. Papyrus kept smiling. “I THOUGHT I WOULDN’T GET THE CHANCE TO SAY THANK YOU IN PERSON. DID YOU GET MY LETTER?”

Gaster said nothing at first, unmoving, sockets as wide as Undyne had ever seen them. Then, very slowly, his head tipped and rose in a nod. Papyrus beamed.

“OH GOOD! AUNT AL SAID SHE WOULD GIVE IT TO YOU! AND YOU GOT SANS’S TOO, RIGHT?”

Another nod, smaller than the first. Alphys fidgeted, wringing her hands and glancing around at everyone, her mouth opening and closing as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out what.

After half a minute of one of the most awkward silences Undyne had ever experienced, Papyrus straightened, his face brightening even further.

“OH!” He reached into one of his sweater pockets and dug around inside, pulling out a carefully-folded piece of paper. “I DREW SOMETHING FOR YOU! I DIDN’T KNOW WHEN I’D GET THE CHANCE TO SEE YOU BUT I WANTED TO GIVE IT TO YOU IN PERSON SO I KEPT IT WITH ME JUST IN CASE! I DRAW A LOT NOW. RUBY GOT ME ART SUPPLIES!”

Gaster didn’t say anything. Papyrus fidgeted, as if he hoped that Gaster would cross the space between them to take the drawing, but when he didn’t move, Papyrus finally took a step forward, then another, holding the drawing in front of him.

“HERE. IT’S … FOR YOU. I DON’T KNOW IF YOU WANT TO PUT IT ON YOUR REFRIGERATOR LIKE RUBY AND ALLANDY DO, BUT …”

As soon as he got within ten feet of Gaster, Gaster took a step back. Papyrus paused. Gaster looked at him, as if their positions were switched and Gaster was the helpless child and Papyrus was the one who had caused him unthinkable amounts of pain on a whim.

Then Gaster turned around and walked away.

“WAIT!”

Gaster didn’t react. He kept walking, his pace just short of a run. In seconds, he had turned the corner, and the guard followed him, both of them disappearing around the edge of one of the walls, out of sight.

Papyrus paused, drawing held out, before his arm fell back to his side and his shoulders dropped.

“OH …” His head fell, and even though she couldn’t see his face, even though she wanted that sick freak to never show his ugly mug again, Undyne wanted to push past Papyrus, grab Gaster by the neck, and drag him back here himself. But a second later, Papyrus straightened again, turning to Alphys and holding out the drawing with a shy, nervous smile. “COULD … COULD YOU GIVE IT TO HIM LATER, AUNT AL? I WANTED TO GIVE IT TO HIM MYSELF, BUT I GUESS HE’S FEELING SHY TODAY. AT LEAST HE KNOWS IT’S FROM ME.”

Alphys stared, her mouth still opening and closing, words apparently failing her. Her hands trembled as she lifted them to take the paper, like she might accept something alive. Alive and small and fragile that she had to protect.

“Y-yeah … of c-course I will.”

If Papyrus was bothered by her anxiety, by the fact that she wasn’t smiling, he gave no sign. He just smiled wide enough for the both of them combined. “THANK YOU!”

Alphys nodded, a jerky, barely-there movement. Papyrus smiled even wider, then bounded back over to Undyne.

Sans ran out of her makeshift cover and pulled his brother into a hug.

Undyne looked at Alphys. Alphys looked back. Neither of them said a word.

And the boys just held each other, as if nothing else mattered in the world.

*

She didn’t know how Alphys had convinced her to do this again.

It wasn’t like she didn’t want to. She loved these kids. She might not be willing to say it out loud yet, but … they were like little brothers. She had never thought she even wanted little brothers. She wanted to keep them safe. Make sure no one ever hurt them again. Make sure that that sick freak who called himself a scientist never got anywhere near them—

And she had failed.

She knew it wasn’t all her fault. No one had told her that Gaster would be out of the luxury suite he called his cell today. But … she should have known anyway. It was her job to look after the kids, wasn’t it? For a few hours that day, anyway. It was her job to make sure they got to live their lives without having to think about the piece of crap that had made them.

Papyrus had tried to tell her on the way back to the house—because there was no way she was leaving them at the Core after that, even if she had to cancel training—that he was glad that he got to see Gaster. That he was glad he got to thank him in person, glad that he got to give him the present he had apparently made more than a month ago.

Undyne had to fight every one of her instincts not to bash her head into the closest wall.

It really shouldn’t have surprised her when Alphys showed up at the house an hour later, pleading for her forgiveness, insisting that she was so, so sorry and she had made such a huge mistake and she must have told her the wrong time to come by and she should have made sure Gaster was gone before then but she had forgotten that Gaster would be coming that day in the first place and—

After that, she had devolved into senseless babbling, and wouldn’t stop until Papyrus slipped past Undyne, pulled her into a hug, and told her that everything was okay.

Undyne wasn’t sure how much of the conversation he had heard, or if he even knew what Alphys was so upset about. It had never mattered to Papyrus. It didn’t matter who they were—or even what they had done. If someone needed help, he would be there.

That was who he was. And at this point, it wasn’t going to change.

Undyne had expected Ruby and Allandy to forbid her from coming to babysit again after that, but the next day, just as she was getting up, Ruby called to thank her for watching the boys and tell her how happy they had been to see her. Undyne didn’t ask whether the boys had told her what really happened. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Those kids were never going to tell Ruby and Allandy everything, just like they were probably never going to call them their parents.

Ruby and Allandy had accepted that. They were happy with that.

Maybe that was why they were willing to settle for her.

She was glad they weren’t mad at Alphys, of course, and it was nice not to have a couple as sweet as them made at her, but she still couldn’t believe they invited her to babysit again a week later. She had wanted to say no, to refuse to come over unless at least Ruby or Allandy was there with her. But when she brought it up to Alphys, Alphys had immediately encouraged her to give it a try.

And Undyne wasn’t very good at saying no to Alphys.

So here she was. Sitting on the couch, watching anime, an hour after she put the boys to bed. Ruby had said she and Allandy would be back around midnight. She had forgotten to ask where they were going. She had their cell phone numbers memorized by now, but tonight, she hadn’t had a reason to call it.

Neither of the boys had mentioned what had happened last time since she arrived. Maybe they guessed she didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe they didn’t want to talk about it. Either way, they were content with board games and kids’ anime and a game that had no name but which involved Papyrus pretending to be a beautiful prince trapped on the kitchen table—complete with one of Allandy’s old dresses—rescued by his brave brother Sans and the “SUPER AMAZING FISH LADY KNIGHT.”

It was a cool game.

But eventually the boys got tired, and even though Undyne wasn’t exactly the best at getting people to calm down, they still managed to get to sleep without any problems. When Undyne closed the door to their bedroom, they were curled up together under the blankets, their faces smoothed out in peace. The sort of peace they should have had since the day they were born.

At least, she had thought so.

It took a minute before she noticed the feeling of eyes on her, but the second she did, she spun around, her hand already curling around a spear that wasn’t there. Then she froze, her eyes wide as they fell on Sans, standing at the end of the hallway, looking even smaller than usual in his oversized pajamas. Face blank. Watching her.

Undyne’s shoulders fell, her hands loosening, the hints of magic that had sparked around her fingers fading away.

“Hey, kid,” she said, as if she hadn’t been ready to attack him a few seconds ago. “I thought you were already asleep.”

Sans just shrugged and walked further into the room, his face unreadable. “couldn’t sleep.”

Undyne hummed and flopped back down on the couch, keeping her eyes on him.

“Well, I’m just watching anime.” She hesitated, waiting for a response, then patted the spot beside her. “Wanna join?”

Sans glanced at the TV, then shrugged. “sure.”

Only once he had taken a seat next to her did Undyne remember what she had been watching. She couldn’t think of the title off the top of her head—the DVD Alphys had found was in Japanese with no subtitles—but from what Undyne could tell, it involved a lot of ancient warriors with big swords trying to kill each other. Alphys hadn’t been too fond of it, but Undyne had snatched it out of her hands as soon as she offered it up.

It was pretty violent for a kid, but …

She looked back to the screen just in time to see someone’s head getting chopped off with a sword. She looked back to Sans. He stared at her, face almost blank.

Yeah … probably best not to make sure this was turned off before Ruby or Allandy got back.

Neither of them said anything for a while after that. They stared at the screen, even though Undyne had stopped paying attention to the plot. If there was a plot. She was beginning to think that the whole point of this show was just people fighting each other with swords. Which made for a pretty awesome show on its own, so she couldn’t really blame them for not wanting to waste time with plot.

After a few minutes, she found her attention drifting back to Sans. His eyes were on the screen, but they were distant, hazy, the way they looked when he was thinking about something way more intensely than a kid should be thinking about anything.

“Something on your mind?” she asked, with about the same level of awkwardness she had felt when Ruby walked into the kitchen after she and Papyrus nearly burned it down.

Sans glanced at her out of the corner of his eye—his good eye, she couldn’t help but remember—before he turned away again and shrugged.

“sort of.”

Undyne raised an eyebrow, but Sans didn’t say anything else. She settled a little further back against the couch. “Well, if you wanna talk, spit it out. I’m listening.”

Sans remained silent. She had figured the chances of him not talking were good. Papyrus was the talking one. He would talk about everything and yet he would talk about nothing. He could ramble for an hour without really saying anything, but if she pressed, if she insisted, then usually, he would tell her the truth.

Even if it took her a long time to accept that the truth wasn’t what she had expected.

Because she had expected the truth to be anger. Fury. Betrayal, hurt, trauma, horror, anything. And there was pain. There was plenty of pain, plenty of hurt and ache and sadness. But none of the fury. None of the latent desires for revenge that Undyne sometimes wanted to encourage.

None of the many, many things that Gaster deserved.

“my brother forgave him.”

It was so quiet, so unexpected, that for a second Undyne thought the words had come out of her own head. But then she turned to find Sans staring down at his lap, clenching his hands around the fabric of his pajamas, his smile tight and his sockets dark.

The voice in her head didn’t sound like that. The voice in her head wasn’t that soft.

Sans shook his head and clenched his hands tighter.

“i … i don’t know if he was ever really mad at him. sometimes, yeah, but it was so quick and then he’d make excuses for him or say that maybe he didn’t have a choice when he did bad things to us or he really could be good and …”

He squeezed his eyes shut, long enough to take a shuddering breath before he let it out again.

“he forgave him. for all of it. it was so … easy for him.” He curled up so small that it looked like the couch could swallow him up without notice. “i told him i’d never forgive him. i told him nothing he could ever do would ever make up for what he did.”

She had known him for more than a year now, but he had never sounded so young. So scared. Even when he had been near-catatonic after that first … incident, it hadn’t been like this.

He hadn’t let her see him this bad.

Her eyes narrowed, and her brow set.

“Good.”

Sans uncurled just a bit, enough to meet her eyes. “huh?”

“Good,” she repeated. “Your brother can do what he wants, but so can you. You don’t wanna forgive him, so don’t. He sucks. He hurt you a lot and he doesn’t deserve you forgiving him.”

He started to talk, then stopped, then started and stopped several times again before shaking his head, helpless and lost.

“he fixed my eye.”

“And?” Undyne asked, with more bite than she had intended.

“he … he fixed it,” Sans repeated, as if just saying the words again would make them make any more sense, when now they clearly made none. “he didn’t have a reason to do it, but … he still fixed it. no one made him. he … my brother told me that when i passed out, when the machine almost killed me, it was him who saved me, he healed me, but he can’t heal, my brother told me that, way back in the lab, he couldn’t heal before but he healed me, and my brother said it’s because he really cares about me and … and i …”

He was shaking. He was thin and tiny and helpless and he had 1 HP and he was sitting there shaking like Undyne would after spending two hours in Snowdin in a tank top.

Sans let out a long, trembling breath and shook his head.

“i don’t even know what to think anymore. i hate him, but … he still fixed me, and …”

He put both his hands up to the sides of his skull, squeezing it as if it were threatening to burst from the inside. Undyne wanted to snatch him up and hold him so tight he couldn’t feel anything else, but as soon as her fingers brushed his arm, he jolted back. Undyne winced, but pulled her hand away.

It was easy to forget how little time had passed since he let anyone but Papyrus touch him.

She paused, wracking her brain for a solution that didn’t involve hugging the daylights out of him, watching him grow tenser by the second. Finally, she huffed a sigh.

“Kid.” Sans didn’t look up, but his breathing quieted a bit, and his hands didn’t grip his skull quite as hard. Undyne shook her head. “None of us know what to do about this. I dunno if everyone else is trying to act like they do, but they don’t. None of us know what we’re supposed to think.”

She reached out again to touch his head. He flinched, but she persisted, tilting his head enough for him to look at her. She stared back at him with hard, unwavering eyes, her mouth set in a thin line that made her look every bit the Royal Guard she had spent so long training to be.

“But what he did to you? That doesn’t deserve to be forgiven. It doesn’t matter what he does to make up for it, it doesn’t matter what he fixes, that doesn’t change the fact that he messed everything up in the first place.”

Sans looked at her, unmoving, unspeaking. She let go of his head and let her hand flop back into her lap as she settled into the cushions.

“Papyrus can forgive him. That’s his right, ‘cause it’s his choice. But it’s your choice, too. And you don’t have to forgive him. Ever.”

Sans didn’t say anything at first. His hands fell back to his sides, but he didn’t seem to notice them. His eyelights were little more than pinpricks by this point, and they flickered in and out of view, sometimes going completely black. After a minute, he tilted his head to stare at the floor, while the TV flashed another image of a guy getting impaled through the chest. She really should turn that off.

“but … what does that make me?” Sans asked, drawing her attention back to him. “if he can … if he really changes, and i don’t forgive him …”

“That makes you the person he hurt,” Undyne cut him off, if only because she didn’t want to hear what else this kid had rolling around in his head. She gritted her teeth and tried in vain to keep her hands from curling into fists. “The person who he … took everything away from. It doesn’t matter if he gave some of it back. It doesn’t change what he did.”

Sans glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “papyrus said that just because someone does bad things … that doesn’t mean they can’t do good things.”

Undyne huffed through her nose. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the bad things don’t matter.”

A few seconds passed where neither of them spoke. Sans stared at the ground.

“they don’t matter to my brother.”

Undyne bit down on her tongue to keep herself from shouting, took several deep breaths, then turned to him again.

“Look, punk,” she said, firmly enough to snap his attention back to her. “Your brother is his own person, and he can make his own choices. But that doesn’t mean you have to make the same ones.”

Sans’s browbone furrowed. “so are his choices the right ones?”

“Never said that,” she shot back.

His brow furrowed further. “so are they the wrong ones?”

“Never said that either.”

“so which one is it?” he almost demanded, sitting up straighter to look at her a little more closely. “which one’s right?”

Undyne paused again, and wondered when she had signed up to have deep ethical discussions at midnight with a kid who, mentally, couldn’t be older than twelve. But she had never been one to dismiss someone’s good questions just because they were young. Asgore hadn’t dismissed her because she was a kid trying to fight him, and Undyne wasn’t going to do that to anyone else. But still, no answer came, and after a minute, she found herself shaking her head.

“I don’t know.”

This time it was her turn to stare at the floor, even as she felt Sans’s eyes locked on her, examining her in a way that a kid that young really shouldn’t have been able to. When she finally looked back, he was still staring, the weirdest expression on his face. She had met all kinds of monsters with all kinds of faces, but a skeleton with a mouth that never quite stopped smiling had to be one of the most difficult she had seen so far.

“you want to hurt him,” Sans said at last, with the same certainty with which he might state Snowdin was covered in snow. “for what he did to us. you wanna hurt him.”

Undyne opened her mouth, and for a second, she thought she might lie. But it was just a second. She respected Sans far too much to say something so blatantly untrue to his face. She closed her mouth and looked away, her face blank.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“are you going to?” Sans asked, turning his head to look at her in full.

Undyne looked back at him. “Do you want me to?”

It wasn’t the sort of question she should have asked, or one she would have asked if there was anyone else around, or if she hadn’t been so braindead after a long day. But she didn’t take it back, and Sans just stared at her as her words soaked in, as if he were considering them.

“would you hurt him if i asked you to?” he went on, his voice as unreadable as his face. Undyne blinked. Before she could even begin to think of a response, he turned away, gritting his teeth even though he couldn’t part them. “papyrus would hate it if he knew i asked that question.”

“Can’t blame you for asking it, though,” Undyne replied. Sans didn’t even look at her. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the ceiling. “He kinda reminds me of Asgore.”

Sans’s head whipped around to face her, and she didn’t have to look at him to imagine the incredulous look on his face. “my brother?”

“Mm.” Undyne could barely hold back her smirk, even though there wasn’t much funny about it. She tilted her head back. “Back when I was a kid, I tried to fight him to prove I was the strongest. And he wouldn’t fight back. ‘Course, I couldn’t even land a hit on him, I didn’t do any damage, but G—”

And suddenly the smirk was gone, and Undyne’s whole body was boiling, her soul pounding, and she was glad the Capital was so far away, because otherwise she might have run there right now and snapped Gaster’s neck. Honestly, even with the distance, it was more than a little tempting.

But that wouldn’t have helped anything. Well … maybe it would have. A little. It would have made her feel better for a while.

Until anyone found her and she had to face the fact that killing someone didn’t change the things they had already done.

She let out a long, heavy breath, and some of that boiling anger slipped out with it.

“I guess he reminds me of myself, too.”

If Sans’s mouth could have actually opened, his jaw probably would have fallen off his face.

“you?”

He said it a little like he might suggest she spent her free time meditating or that she was actually “quiet-natured.” Undyne huffed a humorless laugh and settled further into the couch.

“You didn’t know me for very long before I … found out, kid,” she muttered, as much to herself as to him. She stared ahead of her even though she still felt his eyes locked on her face. She pressed her lips into a thin line. “It changes you. Learning stuff like that.”

She gripped her arms a little tighter, a crease forming in the center of her brow.

“Changes what you think is important. Once you know what some people are willing to do to get the things they think are important.”

Several seconds passed. Undyne glanced beside her, to where Sans was staring, wide-eyed, expression as unreadable as ever. She resisted the urge to smack herself in the face.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this. God, you’re just a little punk, I’m supposed to be listening to you, not rambling on about my own problems.”

She let her head fall back against the couch. Sans didn’t say anything. She let a few more seconds pass, wondering if she should just take him back to bed, before he finally shifted beside her, drawing her gaze back to him, just as he turned to stare at the floor.

“did people really think he was gonna do good things?”

This time, Undyne didn’t even try to stop her hands from curling into fists. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself forward on the couch so she could catch his eye.

“Now you listen, and you better listen good,” she said, lifting a finger and pointing it at him, only a few inches away from his face. “No one knew what he was doing to you. Not one person I have ever met would have wanted us to break the barrier if they knew … if that was what we had to do to get there.”

He turned his head just enough to look at her. It wasn’t an accusing look, or an angry look, but Undyne still couldn’t bring herself to keep her finger up. It felt wrong, pointing fingers at him, no matter what the reason.

For a minute, neither of them spoke, and at last, Sans’s gaze dropped back to his lap.

“you all liked him,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It didn’t even sound like a judgment. “you believed in him.”

Undyne gritted her teeth.

“I never said my judgment was the best, kid,” she muttered, all the fire within her gone, like someone had dumped water over a pile of hot coals. “Apparently none of ours was.”

Silence. Undyne glanced up at the TV to find two women whacking at each other with swords. It didn’t seem nearly as interesting as it had when she first started watching it.

Papyrus would have hated this. He hated violence. He hated people getting hurt, even if it wasn’t real. He never would have seen the appeal of watching something like this for fun.

She had thought, for a long time, that that would have made him a terrible Royal Guard.

That violence was necessary sometimes, and there was no way a Royal Guard could escape that.

Gaster had thought violence was necessary, too.

It hadn’t been in an obvious way. It wasn’t like he had walked around talking about torturing kids. But … from everything she had heard about him, he hadn’t acted out of the ordinary. Other than being a total nerd, and kind of asocial, he hadn’t acted like a sadistic freak. He had just been a guy determined to get them out of this dump.

Just like Asgore.

Just like Alphys.

Just like her.

Just like … all of them.

What if he wasn’t all that different from them, at least at the start? Were they all capable of doing the things he had done, if the circumstances pushed them hard enough? She couldn’t imagine it, but … there were a lot of things she couldn’t imagine that had happened anyway. A lot of people she had trusted that turned out far different from what she had expected.

A lot of things that had made sense before … but she doubted would ever make sense again.

If the idea of violence being necessary had let something like this happen … maybe it wasn’t such a great philosophy after all. If Papyrus’s stubborn pacifism could have prevented this, if someone like him had been on the Guard from the beginning, if that philosophy that she knew could get him killed could have kept him from suffering so much in the first place …

“don’t be mad at alphys.”

Undyne jolted and turned so fast that her ponytail almost whacked her in the face.

“What?” Sans wasn’t looking at her, and for a while, she just sat there, staring, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. Then she let her mind drift back to a few weeks earlier, to the last time she had come over to watch the kids in the evening. To the last time she had sat on the couch with both of the boys, curled up against the arm of the couch.

To when Alphys had come in and …

Undyne’s brow furrowed. “Wait a sec, you … you were asleep.”

“faking,” he muttered, as if it should have been obvious.

And really, if she thought about it, it should have been. Sans wasn’t like other kids, except when it made sense. And it made perfect sense for a kid who had never had a reason to trust anyone, who must have known how many secrets people were keeping from him, to use whatever means necessary to get the information he wanted.

She felt like laughing, but she didn’t.

“Sometimes I can’t believe you and Papyrus are brothers,” she muttered, and only a second after the words left her mouth, she wanted to smack herself for how insensitive they might sound to a kid who had clung to the word “brother” even when Undyne sincerely doubted Gaster had used it, too. But if Sans was offended by it, he didn’t react, and after a few seconds’ pause, Undyne huffed a sigh. “I’m not mad at Alphys. She’s … really cool, she’s not the kind of person who’d … do stuff like that. And I know she …”

She trailed off. Sans stared at the floor.

“she still likes him,” he finished. “kind of.”

“Not like she used to,” Undyne added, though her voice didn’t come out half as certain as she hoped it would.

“but she does like him,” Sans replied. Undyne didn’t protest. Sans’s browbone furrowed. “she thinks he can be better. like my brother.”

He looked at her at last. She had never noticed how old his eyes looked. Way older than he was. Way older than any kid's eyes should have looked, way older than most adult's should have looked.

It reminded her a little of Gerson, on those days when he couldn’t quite cover up all his memories with a goofy smile and jokes.

What the hell had this kid been through that would be as bad as a man who had lived through the War?

“do you think he can be better?” Sans asked, and suddenly the adult was gone, and he was just a kid, a scared little kid who didn’t know what to make of the world, a kid who tried so hard but still didn’t understand, and all he wanted was to live a normal life with his brother but the world seemed determined not to let him have even that.

Undyne swallowed against her dry mouth.

“It doesn’t matter,” she bit out. “I’m never gonna like him. No matter what he does. He was supposed to do good for monsters, and what he did to you to … that’s not good for anyone.”

He searched her face. She couldn’t tell whether or not he found what he was looking for.

“what if he had gotten everyone out?” he went on, quieter than before. A bit of the edge returned to his voice. “what if it had worked? would it have been good for people then?”

Undyne opened her mouth, paused, and closed it. Sans didn’t react as she sat there, searching for an answer that should have come far more easily than it did. Swords clattered on the screen in front of her, people screamed as their heads were cut off or their limbs severed, but Undyne focused all her attention on the scared little kid who had been through more than she wanted to imagine.

“I used to think I would do anything to get us out of here,” she started, forcing herself to look at him even as her eyes itched to glance away. “That was why I was so determined to get in the Royal Guard after Asgore gave me the idea.”

He looked at her. Just looked at her. If she looked closely, she could still see the kid he had been a year ago, the kid scared and confused about everything, the kid who knew that nothing he did would matter, the kid who had given up and hardly dared to believe that things were going to get better.

The kid who, even now, never took anything for granted. And probably never would.

Undyne hissed through gritted teeth and jerked her head away.

“I didn’t know what ‘anything’ meant then.” Her face set like stone, but when she faced him again, slowly, carefully, all she could feel in her own expression was grief. “And I would gladly trap us down here for eternity if it meant I could erase one second of all you two have gone through.”

He stared at her, and she allowed herself the smallest of smiles as she reached out and tapped him right above his nasal cavity.

“And don’t you dare forget it, punk.”

Sans searched her face, but this time, she could see the exact moment when he found what he was looking for. The tension she hadn’t even noticed in his shoulders fell, and his smile, still tired, still sad, actually looked real.

“k," he murmured. He shifted on the couch, closer to her, and rested his head back on the cushions. “mind if i stay here for a little while?”

Undyne let her own smile stretch wider and lifted an arm to slip it around his shoulders, glancing at the TV.

“Just close your eyes in a couple minutes. That guy’s gonna get his guts ripped out.”

“mm,” Sans hummed, but his eyes were already closed, and a minute after that, his head clonked onto her shoulder as his tiny body finally gave in to sleep.

Ruby and Allandy got back a little after one, and found Undyne on the couch watching kids’ anime while Sans curled up in her lap, sleeping as peacefully as either of them had ever seen.

*

She had no idea where the two of them had gotten the idea for a tea party.

It might have been Asgore, but that seemed odd, especially since he hardly ever came to see them and he rarely had tea when he did come over. Undyne had made tea a couple of times when she babysat—and she was darn good at it, if she said so herself—but she had never brought up the idea of a tea party. Allandy was great at making tea, and Papyrus had learned how from them, but she didn't think either Ruby or Allandy did tea parties. Then again, maybe they did all the time. It wasn't like she was constantly around.

In any case, her two favorite punks had invited her over for a tea party, and even if she couldn’t figure out why, there was no way in hell she was going to miss it.

So she pulled on the thickest coat she owned, as she always did, and trekked through Waterfall to Snowdin, ignoring the numbness in her cheeks until she reached the familiar door. She tried knocking with her glove still on, but it made almost no sound, so she took it off, shook her hand out to get the feeling back, and banged on the wood almost hard enough to knock it down.

Only a few seconds later, the door opened, but instead of Papyrus’s widely grinning face and booming voice greeting her, she looked down to find Sans, staring up at her with the widest grin she had seen yet.

“hey, aunt dyney.”

The questions that had formed on Undyne’s lips vanished. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, but she couldn’t quite keep the tiny smirk off her face.

“You’re never gonna stop callin’ me that, are ya, punk?”

“nope,” Sans replied, as smug as ever.

He pulled open the door a little more to let her in. She took a step forward, but paused in the doorway. Even if Papyrus wasn’t the one to answer the door—which he almost always was—he should have been close by. But she didn’t see him.

In fact … she didn’t see much of anything. Most of the lights had been turned off.

“Where’s your brother?” she asked as Sans pushed the door shut behind her, leaving the entryway even darker.

Sans slipped around to walk in front of her and pointed toward what she was fairly sure was the dining room. “back there.”

His tone was weird. She couldn’t quite put a name to it. She didn’t think she had ever heard it coming from him before. But she had heard it, from every kid who had tried to stick a sign on her back when she was signing her autograph, as they waltzed away with an innocent look she had learned not to believe. Her eyes narrowed.

“What are you hiding? And why are all the lights dimmed?”

“cause,” Sans replied without turning to look at her.

Undyne rolled her eyes. “That’s not an answer.”

He just shrugged.

“sounds like an answer to me.”

She tried to glare at him, but she knew that even if he had been looking at her, he wouldn’t have cared. So she just huffed another sigh and followed him through the house, tugging off her coat, hat and gloves and dropping them on the couch. She would pick them up later.

“You’re lucky I like you so much.”

Sans tilted his head enough to smirk at her over his shoulder. “yup.”

Undyne bit back a groan and shook her head, but kept following him.

It really was dark in here. Way too dark to be normal. Did Papyrus have a headache or something? Had the power gone out? Except … no, she saw some light up ahead. But it was flickering, like fire. Maybe the power had gone out and they were using candles instead? But if that was the case, then why wouldn’t Sans just say so? The power had gone out before, and neither he nor his brother were afraid of the dark.

And Undyne didn’t have to see his face to know Sans was still smirking.

After a minute of meandering through the house, several feet behind him, she crossed her arms and gave him a look, though she knew he wouldn’t see it.

“Okay, spill already, what are you—”

Then they turned the corner into the dining room, and Undyne stopped dead.

The atmosphere in the rest of the house had been weird, but this room took the cake and smashed it in Undyne’s face, frosting and all.

The only light in the room came from several candles placed on the table, with a dim glow coming from underneath the closed kitchen door. The normally-plain table had been decorated with a deep crimson cloth, plates—nice plates, the old china set Allandy had found almost completely unscathed in the dump—filled with cookies and a matching pot of tea steaming in the center. Two chairs, and only two, sat at opposite sides.

One of them already occupied.

“U-U-Undyne?!” Alphys stammered out, her glasses almost falling off her face from how hard she stopped.

Undyne’s jaw had almost fallen off her face at this point, but she managed to clamp it shut. “Alphys?!”

One then did Undyne notice the thin, bony figure standing a few feet away from the table, smiling so wide it was a wonder it didn’t split his skull in half. He held out his arms far out to his sides.

“SURPRISE!”

Undyne blinked. Then she blinked again. Then again, and three more times after that. She looked at Papyrus, then at Alphys, then at the spread laid out in front of her. She could barely keep her jaw from falling open again.

“What is this? What did you punks …?” She trailed off, thinking back to what Sans had told her when he called to give her the invitation. Her brow rose. “Is this …?”

“a tea party,” Sans finished for her, stepping around to stand in front of her, grinning with more mischief than she had ever seen on a kid’s face. “just like we told you.”

Undyne blinked again. “I thought … you said …”

Somehow, Sans grinned even wider.

“we never said it was a tea party with us.”

Undyne stared, taking in the sparkle in his eyesockets, the sheer smugness of his grin. She shook her head, a tiny smirk curling her own lips in return.

“You’re a sneaky little thing, aren’tcha?”

Sans just kept smiling.

“COME ON, COME ON!” Papyrus called, running over to grab Undyne’s hand and tug her toward the prepared table—and Alphys. “WE HAVE TEA AND COOKIES! RUBY MADE THEM!”

“You got Ruby in on this, too?!” Undyne asked, stumbling a little at Papyrus’s surprising strength before she got her balance.

“and allandy,” Sans added. “they helped us pick out the tea.”

Undyne let herself be dragged into the empty chair, flopping down hard enough to make the legs screech against the floor. She huffed, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared across the table at her new dining mate.

“They’re gangin’ up on us, Alphys! Are we gonna let them get away with this?” she asked, one fist already raised to bang against the table like a war cry. Only when she got a good look did she notice that Alphys’s yellow face had gone entirely red, and her eyes were focused very firmly on the small, empty plate in front of her, her hands wringing in her lap. “Alphys?”

Alphys jolted at the sound of her name and somehow ducked her head even lower.

“I-I …”

Undyne looked at her, concerned. Then she looked around one more time at the “tea party” the boys had set up.

They had really gone all out. Sure, it was a little embarrassing, but … she couldn’t say she disliked the idea. Alphys was … cool. She was smart. Really smart. And passionate. And cute—not that Undyne had noticed.

There were way worse people she could be sharing a totally-not-romantic-even-though-it-looked-pretty-romantic tea party with.

She huffed one more time, because even if she was going to go along with this, she wasn’t going to make it easy.

“Well … I guess I said yes to the tea party,” she mumbled, just loud enough for the boys to hear. Sans and Papyrus stood together a few feet away from the table, and it was almost scary how quickly both their faces lit up—and in perfect synchrony, too. Undyne scowled and pointed a finger at them. “But you punks better eat some of the cookies!”

Sans just grinned. “sure we will. in the kitchen.”

“SO YOU TWO CAN BE ALONE,” Papyrus added, grabbing his brother’s hand and pulling him toward the kitchen door. He paused once, turning back to face them, his smile almost as mischievous as his brother’s. “WINK.”

Then they were both gone, the door opening and closing so fast Undyne didn’t even have the chance to squint at the light.

They were giggling even once the door shut behind them.

Undyne blinked. Then she furrowed her brow, looked at Alphys, and blinked again.

“Did … he actually say ‘wink’?”

Alphys was still staring at her plate, and she gave a quick nod. “Mm-hmm.”

Undyne glanced at the kitchen door, but of course it didn’t open, and after a moment she huffed and looked back to her dinner partner.

Still staring at her plate.

“You … okay there, Alph?”

“Mm-hmm,” Alphys said again. Had she gotten even redder than before?

Undyne shifted in her seat, clearing her throat a few times and still not managing to get rid of the lump growing inside it.

“Look, uh … if you don’t wanna do this, you don’t have to. I know the punks kinda … threw this on us. So if you’d rather—”

“No!”

It was so sudden that Undyne almost didn’t think it had come from Alphys. Who she thought it had come from, she didn’t know, but nonetheless, her head shot up in time to see Alphys stiffen and hunch her shoulders almost high enough to swallow her head.

“I … I-I … I w-want to,” she muttered. She paused, then took a deep breath and looked up, meeting Undyne’s gaze despite how hard she was shaking. “Do this. W-with you. I mean. The tea. A-and cookies. A-a-and the lights are o-okay, and the … is that music?”

It was muffled and quiet, but yes, that was definitely music. Undyne turned around as the door to the kitchen cracked open, just enough for a bony little hand to reach out and set what looked to be a small stereo on the floor outside. A small stereo already playing a romantic violin tune.

Undyne got only a glimpse of Papyrus’s grinning face—and his brief but distinct thumbs-up—before he shut the door again, and she could just make out the sound of two little boys laughing on the other side of the door.

“And here I thought Sans was the only prankster,” Undyne muttered, mostly to herself. She glanced back at Alphys, who stared at her with wide eyes, as if trying to guage her reaction. Undyne’s cheeks were burning, but she still felt a smile tugging at her lips, and this time, she didn’t fight it. She lifted both hands into fists and slammed them down on the table, hard enough to rattle the china. “Well! If we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do it right! Papyrus, crank it up!”

“W-w-what?” Alphys stammered out.

Undyne swore she heard more giggling from the kitchen, but she couldn’t bring herself to care as a hand poked out again and the music—where did those two punks get romantic violin music anyway?—increased to twice its previous volume. Some people might have called it too loud to be romantic. Those people weren’t Undyne.

She looked back at Alphys, adorable, brilliant Alphys, and froze. Her cheeks flushed even hotter, but she kept herself sitting tall. She was a Royal Guard, and she wouldn’t be beaten by this. She cleared her throat and glanced away.

“If, uh,” she started, her voice much quieter than it should have been. “If that’s okay with you.”

Alphys's mouth hung open before she clamped it shut. She ducked her red face, fidgeting in her chair, but just as Undyne was getting ready to tell her all this had been a joke, she made out a tiny nod.

Even with her head tilted so far down, Undyne could still see her smile.

Something in her chest swelled and warmed, and suddenly sitting up straighter wasn’t very hard at all. She smiled, a real smile, and allowed herself a brief, unabashed stare at the monster in the other chair.

don’t be mad at alphys.

She hadn’t been lying. She wasn’t. She never had been. Not really.

They had a lot to talk about, at some point. They had a lot they needed to work through. Alphys had problems Undyne had only seen the tips of, and Undyne still couldn’t stop imagining exactly how many atrocities she could have prevented if she had done what she had always considered to be her duty.

Neither of them had dealt with anything like this before. And despite all her training, despite everything she had learned since she was a kid, Undyne had absolutely no idea what to do.

But she was Undyne. She had never shied back from acting just because she wasn’t sure she would get it right.

And if those two boys were nudging her forward, then Undyne really had no more excuses not to move.

So she allowed herself a wide, if nervous grin as she poured tea for herself and Alphys and put several cookies on each of their plates. Part of her wished that she had gotten a bit of warning to dress up for this, but then again, Alphys was just wearing her lounge clothes, and she looked just as adorable as ever.

Maybe she could ask her on a real date later.

Maybe.

If this went well.

And Undyne didn’t spill as much tea as she was doing now.

Spilled tea was fine, though. Casual clothes were fine. Surprise prank set-up not-dates were fine, even if she was definitely going to find a way to get those two back later on.

For now, it didn’t matter.

The boys were giggling, Alphys was blushing—but still smiling—and Undyne couldn’t remember the last time she had been this happy.

Maybe things weren’t perfect. Maybe they wouldn’t be for a very long time.

But it was good enough.