Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There he was, walking around without a care in the world. Well, maybe “walking” was an exaggeration. What he did was dragging himself around, not even lifting his pink slippers from the snowy ground.

“SO, THAT GOOFBALL IS SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR ALTERNATE SELF, BROTHER?” asked Papyrus, his voice far too loud, even though he was trying to whisper.

Sans gritted his teeth and pressed a hand on his mouth. “shuddup! he’s gonna hear us, if ya keep shoutin’.”

“GET YOUR SLIMY HANDS OFF OF ME! WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU SHOWERE-”

The brothers’ victim lifted his gaze, his white eye lights scanning the area.

“who’s there?” he asked. His voice was less deep than Sans’s, and it was soft-edged and distant, as if a part of him was still sleeping. 

The small skeleton waited patiently for someone to answer, then he sighed. “flowey, if you’re gonna kill me’, please, do it right away or leave me alone. i was gonna have a picnic and i’d be glad if you let me eat my sandwiches in peace.”

“FLOWEY?” managed to whisper Papyrus, even through Sans’s fingers.

shit.

Sans perfectly knew what the other version of him was talking about, and he would’ve liked to smack him in the head just for mentioning that near his brother.

“shh, boss. he’s gonna hear us.”

“BROTHER, TELL ME TO “SHH” ANOTHER TIME AND I’LL BITE YOUR FINGERS OFF.”

“you wouldn’t.”

Papyrus lifted a bony eyebrow and Sans let him go. Better not to test him too much. Today he was in a good mood, too.

“hehe, just jokin’, bro.”

“I’M YOUR CHIEF. CALL ME LIEUTENANT.”

“you’re not serious.”

“I’M ALWAYS SERIOUS.”

“yea, but, c’mon… we’re not home. ‘s not like we hafta keep the act goin’ even here.”

“WHICH ACT?”

“the one where you treat me like garbage and you’re an asshole?”

“WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME-!”

Someone cleared their throat, and the brothers lifted their gaze, freezing right after Papyrus had grabbed Sans by his coat and the fight was about to get physical.

“sorry to interrupt you, guys… is everythin’ alright?” asked their victim, with a tired smile. If he was surprised, he wasn’t showing it. He had already seen too much to let anything faze him. “i heard ya shoutin’ from over there.”

Papyrus and Sans looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Then, Papyrus stood up and did his best to loom over the skeleton in pink slippers. Usually monsters would recoil just by seeing Papyrus on the other side of the street and plead for their lives if he ever got that close with such a dark expression, but this potato seemed to not understand or not care about the situation he was in.

“WELL, YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE LISTENED. IT’S RUDE TO EAVESDROP ON PEOPLE, DON’T YOU KNOW?”

“sorry. i didn’t mean to, buddy.”

Sans muffled a snort. Had that runt just called his brother ‘buddy’? Oh boy. He either was really brave or extremely stupid. Probably the latter.

The lack of fear on their victim’s part left Papyrus speechless for a second, but he regained his composure quickly: he grabbed the little skeleton by his puffy, blue jacket and lifted him in the air. The runt didn’t struggle, looking at Papyrus with that irritating, lethargic expression.

Papyrus snatched the picnic chest he was carrying around, and placed both items - skeleton and chest - under his arms. 

“could ya please put me down?” asked the small skeleton.

“NO! YOU’RE OUR PRISONER NOW.”

“oh. okay. doesn’t sound too bad. please don’t eat the sandwiches. they’re for the lady on the other side of the door.”

Papyrus thought this could be the right moment to show this pathetic being that he was in very cruel and dangerous hands, and took a sandwich out of the chest. He ate it right in the face of the small skeleton to mock him. However, his evil grin turned first in a confused expression and then in a marveled stare.

“THIS. THIS IS GOOD. WHAT DID YOU PUT IN THIS THING?”

The runt shrugged. “some shrooms... cheese... ham... i think there’s some mayonnaise too. that was the old lady’s sandwich. She’s gonna be sad, if i don’t check on her.” He scratched his chin, thinking of a solution. “listen, you can come too, if you’re really set on followin’ me. i made enough sandwiches for a whole army, so we can sit down and talk it out together. my friend  will be happy to have some new people to chat with as well. and maybe, later, i’ll let you use pap’s shed to keep me prisoner, if it’s this important to you. I would never want to ruin your fun. what are you even doin’ here, anyway?”

Papyrus’s expression softened a little - and that meant that his terrifying grin had turned into a slightly less homicidal smile -, and he opened his mouth to answer. However, Sans decided it was the right time to take control of the conversation.

He created a sharp bone with his magic and pointed it right under the runt’s jaw.

“listen. i don’t know who you think you’re talkin’ with, but maybe you haven’t realized your situation, so, i’ll gladly explain it to you: we’re not here to make friends or eat sandwiches together. from now on, you’ll do everythin’ we tell ya, willing or not, and if i hear you tryin’ to make my brother take a liking to you again, it will be the last thing you’ll do. is that clear enough?”

The runt stared at him for a long instant, his white eye lights meeting the blood red ones of his kidnapper, and he sighed. He could see the LV in those eye sockets as clear as day. It was at least seven. That guy wasn’t new to killing at all, and he made it very clear that he had no problems adding another name to his list.

“crystal,” whispered the small skeleton. “i wasn’t tryin’ to wash your bro’s brain, anyway. it’s just that i really hoped to get this picnic going. lately’s been really heavy for me and i wanted to have some fun with a friend.”

“THIS PITIFUL CREATURE HAS WEIRD PRIORITIES,” said Papyrus, in a deadpan tone.

“yea, ya can say that,” sighed Sans, rolling his eye lights.

He dispelled the sharp bone and hid his hands in his pockets. If this version of himself had seen half the shit he had been through, maybe that was why he didn’t seem to care that much if Sans gutted him or not. The death threat had slipped on him like oil on water.

The runt took a deep sigh and went limp in Papyrus’s hold, surrendering completely. Since he had been kidnapped and was now their prisoner, he might as well take a nap and let them do all the work.

Sans heard soft snoring come from the ball of clothes, and his eye sockets widened. Was he really...?

He poked the sleeping skeleton with a stick, and a soft groan came out of him, before he resumed snoring even louder.

“i can’t believe it. he fell asleep... now. this guy has a death wish.”

Sans sighed. It wasn’t like he didn’t share the feeling. 

However, he would’ve liked a lot to be able to fall asleep like that, even while being carried by his enemies. At home things were far too difficult to relax - one always had to sleep with an eye open, if they didn’t want to become a pile of gray dust on the floor.

“I BROUGHT A BAGGIE TO KEEP HIM FROM SEEING WHERE OUR BASE IS... BUT IT LOOKS LIKE HE’S OUT COLD.”

Papyrus tapped on the small skeleton’s skull. The runt didn’t react. He was blissfully unaware.

“put it on anyway. this is a sneaky one. maybe he’s just pretending.”

Sans took one of the small skeleton’s arms and lifted it in the air. He released it, and the arm fell right on his face, completely limp.

“welp. yea. he’s really out.”

Sans took the black bag Papyrus had taken out of his uniform - he didn’t want to know from where - and put it on the victim’s skull, making sure it wasn’t too tight, so he could breathe. If the runt died by suffocation it would have been a real pain. Sans had decided to target the different version of himself precisely because he knew his own weak spots better than anyone else. He would have never imagined it could been this easy to subdue him, though. 

He would have never imagined that his alternate version could be so clean, either. No LV at all. How the hell had he survived until now? Monsters like Sans were the first to be targeted due to their low HP. The only way they had to get stronger was to kill other monsters.

That was how Sans had almost forgotten how it was to have only 1 HP. 

Almost.

Sans sighed. Maybe the monsters of this reality were a little chiller than their counterparts. It was difficult to say, but, by looking at the way Sans was snuggling against Papyrus’s leather jacket, he was accustomed to think that other monsters were going to keep him safe.

Sans looked at his brother. Papyrus seemed really embarrassed by the other Sans’s behaviour. It was really funny. Papyrus had no problem with murder at all, but God forbid that someone snuggled against him. That was enough to make his processors give a “404” error.

Sans snorted and offered Papyrus his arm.

“let’s take a shortcut to the base.”

“ASGORE HAS FORBIDDEN YOU TO USE TOO MUCH MAGIC. YOU NEED TO KEEP ENOUGH RESERVES TO GO HOME, IF THERE’S AN EMERGENCY AND WE DON’T GET THAT THING TO WORK.”

Sans rolled his eye lights. “who gives a shit, he isn’t here to tell me what to do. besides, it’s just one shortcut. nothin’ bad. he just told me to stay outta fights.”

Papyrus gave him a look.

Sans growled. “just take my arm! i’ll leave ya here, if ya don’t! i don’t care! i didn’t even want to do this. i agreed to come here because i wanted a vacation - and also because asgore threatened to throw me down waterfall’s pit if i didn’t.”

“BROTHER, MAYBE YOU MISUNDERSTOOD. MY CONCERN ISN’T FOR YOU, BUT FOR MY REPUTATION.  IF YOU DIE, WHAT WILL OTHER PEOPLE THINK OF ME?”

Sans gritted his teeth. Of course Papyrus was worried about the mission. Who cared, if Sans died. Not his brother. 

“i guess they’d think you couldn’t get your idiot brother to follow your orders or something.”

Sans might have considered to jump to his death somewhere just to spite him. Since Papyrus had gotten into the Royal Guard, the only royal thing he had achieved was being a huge pain in the coccyx, and Sans’s patience had run dry a long time before.

Sans felt Papyrus’s hand tighten around his shoulder.

“YES. THEREFORE, I HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, BECAUSE, IF THIS PROVES TO BE A FAILURE -AS YOUR PLANS OFTEN DO -, I’LL MAKE SURE ASGORE KNOWS THIS WAS YOUR BRILLIANT IDEA.”

“thanks. a torturing session with that psycho is just what i need.”

Sans took a deep breath and focused on his magic. It was just a stupid shortcut. He did that too many times to count at home, and here it wasn’t different.

A few moments later, they vanished with a red glow.

Chapter Text

Their base consisted in two tents filled with patches, some supplies, Papyrus’s weapons and two covers. The skeleton brothers had settled in a small clearing in a hidden area surrounded by pine trees and bushes. They hadn’t seen any monsters pass nearby since their arrival, except for the wimpy version of Sans.

Sans knew his double was the only one to dare go that deep in the forest, just because he wanted to talk with the lady on the other side of the door - all they had had to do was to wait for the runt to show up, blissfully unaware, and put him in the sack.

Sans wondered how the old lady of his double’s universe was and he allowed his mind to drift for a moment, before focusing back on his surroundings.

He felt something heavy on his wrist and he made a grimace. He had almost forgotten about it for a few seconds.

“i hate this damn thing,” he whispered, scratching the bone underneath the metallic ring. “i bet alphys has put something i’m allergic to in it, just to spite me.”

Papyrus didn’t even pretend to be interested in what Sans was saying and he put the other Sans on the ground, rearranging his  sleeping body so it would be sitting against a pine tree.

Sans sighed. His attempts at small talk with his brother always fell in a gaping void. He wondered where he still found the will to try after years of indifference in the best cases and violence in the worst ones.

Sans looked at the clock Alphys had given him. She had built it thinking about Sans’s time machine. Somewhere in the resets, a mess of interrupted timelines and attempts at befriending monsterkind on the kid’s part, Alphys had discovered about Sans’s time machine and had retained that information. It happened, from time to time: people other than Sans remembered something, even though they couldn’t explain it. Most of the times they just shrugged it off, but Alphys was crazy enough to believe the little voices in her head - and she had many -, so she had sent some guards to Sans’s lab and taken the machine for herself in order to study it.

She had asked Sans - or rather forced him - to help her with the machine and finish it once for all. 

Sans had been stuck with her in the lab for a few months, before they could finally put the last wire in place and come up with a solution.

The machine he had tried so many times to build to fix everything that had happened in the past had finally been built.

It should have made him happy. But that wasn’t the case.

Instead of using it to prevent being encaged underneath that cursed mountain, the event that had made monsterkind spiral down into violence, Asgore had told Alphys they were going to use it to take more souls from other dimensions. Souls with DT.

There was a lot their world was lacking, from basic needs items, especially food, to the human souls they had slowly collected through centuries, only to have them vanish mysteriously a few months prior to Alphys’s invasion of Sans’s lab.

Sans thought their disappearance had something to do with Frisk, the last human kid to fall down from the surface, and with Flowey. But he was already compromised enough since Alphys and Asgore had discovered what he was hiding in his basement, so he hadn’t tried to investigate any further. He wasn’t suicidal… not to that point. 

Right now the kid’s soul, the only one they had been able to collect, was resting in the dungeon of the palace, under Asgore’s paranoid watch. Getting close to it was risky and trying to take informations out of it was even worse. So, Sans had decided to let it go and just mind his own business. The kid wasn’t his problem anymore. He had told her to scram enough times already, to live in the ruins with the old lady if she wanted to survive, but she had never listened to him. It wasn’t his fault if her soul had ended up in a jar. Not even if he had played a major part in that event.

Sans sighed and hid the watch under his jacket. He had to keep it safe, even though it bothered him a lot. It was their only ticket home. Papyrus had a matching one on his wrist, and both devices only had one more use, before disintegrating. They worked as a surrogate for the time machine that Alphys had converted into something far scarier, able to go through timelines that exceeded their own and tamper with things that shouldn’t have been tampered with. Alphys had been able to convert the machine in a portal to other timelines that could take a lot of people through and stay open for as long as she wanted, but she needed another machine for the connection to be created. So, what she had been able to do was replicate the machine’s function on a much smaller scale, allowing Sans and Papyrus to move between timelines using the skeletons’ magic reserves. That was the reason behind Papyrus being so annoying before, threatening Sans to tell Asgore about his carelessness towards the mission, but, since the other Sans had brought a bunch of paninis with him, Sans was going to replenish his magic with those in no time.

Sans sat down on a rock and unwrapped a sandwich. He ate it while looking at Papyrus and the other Sans.

His brother was now enveloping the chubby skeleton with a strong rope. The other Sans stayed limp in Papyrus’s hold, completely at ease in his arms. He was snoring softly with a blissful smile, as if being handled by Papyrus made him feel safe. It was unsettling to say the least.

Sans didn’t feel safe near his brother at all - nor near anyone else, for the matter.

Papyrus took the box with all his torturing devices and brought it close to the small guy. Then, he took the black bag off of his skull.

“AWAKEN, MISERABLE CREATURE! THE GREAT PAPYRUS IS ABOUT TO ASK YOU SOME VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS!”

The other Sans didn’t move an inch, completely passed out.

Papyrus sighed and patted him on a cheek. 

“COME ON. WAKE UP.”

The other Sans made a confused noise and he finally opened his eye sockets. He looked around with hazy eye lights, trying to understand where and when he was.

“uh... is this still goin’? i hafta stop drink too much ketchup in the evening. it gives me weird dreams.”

The other Sans looked at them, unsure if they were real or not, and then he sighed. It didn’t matter anyway. There were two versions of him and his brother. So what? It wasn’t the weirdest thing he had seen. If someone could rewind time and shape the world however they wanted, the existence of alternate versions of himself and the other Papyrus was plausible.

“UNFORTUNATELY FOR YOU, PATHETIC MARSHMALLOW, THIS ISN’T A DREAM AT ALL. AND, IF IT WAS, IT WOULD BE YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE! NYEHEHEHE!”

Instead of being scared, the other Sans smiled. There was a weird tenderness in his eye sockets, as if he found Papyrus’s attempts at terrifying him to be sweet.

“i doubt it, guys. i don’t know how it is where you came from, but i don’t think you’re that bad. you carried me around like gentlemen. i ‘preciate people who keep me from doin’ effort.”

Papyrus furrowed his bony eyebrows. He looked at the other Sans as if he had just said a terrible slur.

“go on. interrogate him,” said Sans, while munching on the sandwich stolen from his counterpart. It was really good. 

He rummaged through the pic-nic chest, hoping to find something to drink. He only found two bottles of ketchup, but there wasn’t any other condiment. The other Sans didn’t seem to like mustard.

Papyrus started to unwrap the torturing instruments and took out a device to detach fingers in the most painful way possible, one phalanx at a time.

He placed the device on the other Sans’s hand, just as an incentive.

“uh... ya know that i only have 1 HP, right?” said the other Sans, giving the device a dubious look. “it’d be a bummer if i dusted right at the beginning of your interrogatory.”

“ONLY 1 HP?”

“yea,” said Sans. “he’s only got one, like when i was a kid. man, that sucks.”

“SO... HE HASN’T KILLED ANYONE?”

“not that i can see.”

Papyrus looked at the other Sans with a confused expression. Then he sighed and took off the torture device, deeply disappointed.

“oh, man. i guess you hafta let me go, now,” said the other Sans, with a smile. “how sad.”

“HOW DO I INTERROGATE HIM, THEN?”

Sans sighed. That wasn’t his job. 

“i dunno. make him drink this ketchup. maybe it’ll loosen his tongue.”

Papyrus brightened up. “THAT’S A GOOD- I MEAN, ACCEPTABLE IDEA, BROTHER.”

“you’re welcome.”

Papyrus went through the picnic chest and picked up the ketchup bottles.

“NOW YOU WILL GULP THESE DOWN,” he ordered the other Sans.

“oh, no!” the small skeleton said, recoiling in horror. “everything, but not this! it’s not like i love ketchup!”

Papyrus gave him an evil smile and knelt in front of him. The other Sans offered a pathetic amount of resistance, before accepting the bottle Papyrus was trying to shove in his mouth.

He drank the ketchup with surprising joy, for someone who supposedly hated the condiment.

“ARE YOU FEELING ANY AMOUNT OF DISCOMFORT AT ALL?” asked Papyrus, furrowing his bony eyebrows.

The other Sans stopped drinking for a second and gave him his best tormented face. “oh, i totally hate this. it’s terrible. i want to die.”

“KEEP ON DRINKING, THEN!”

A while later, the first ketchup bottle was empty. A blue flush appeared on the other Sans’s cheekbones, and his eye lights dilated. 

“what about the other bottle?” he asked, slurring his words. “i bet that’s gonna make me talk for sure, even though i have no idea what you want from me. hic! oh, no. i can already feel the discomfort! the pain! so much pain!”

The other Sans squirmed a little in the restraints to make the act believable. Papyrus laughed.

“THAT WILL TEACH YOU TO FEAR THE GREAT PAPYRUS! THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR BEING SASSY WITH THE WRONG PEOPLE!” He crossed his arms, the other bottle of ketchup ready nearby, and he opened a small notebook where he had written down the questions. He cleared his throat. “SO. IS YOUR NAME SANS?”

Sans rolled his eye lights. His brother had never been one to skip orders, even though the answer was obvious. If Asgore and Undyne had put that in the interrogation schedule, he was going to ask it.

Sans had never met anyone who took their job as seriously as his brother. Papyrus was basically married to his job.

The other Sans thought about the answer for a long time.

“uh... um... i’m not sure. the last time i checked, my name was sans. but you’re never sure, ya know? things change, people can make mistakes when they’re writing down your name and, suddenly, your name becomes sons, or worse, sins. so, maybe you should unwrap these nasty ropes and we’ll go check together, just to make sure-”

“shut your trap,” yelled Sans from the other side of the camp, throwing the paper of the sandwich towards him. “you’re not gonna play these kinda games with us. you think we’re stupid?!”

“Y-YEAH,” said Papyrus, who had already gotten prepared to free the other Sans. He did his best to hide the red glow on his face by scratching his cheekbones. “WE’RE THE SMARTESTEST MONSTERS AROUND! YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FOOL US! NYEH!”

The other Sans sighed. “i guess your galaxy brains are too advanced for me, seein’ through all my devious plans. oh, well.”

Sans shook his head and took out another sandwich. That guy would have been able to sell ice to penguins. He was going to talk them to exasperation, if they weren’t decisive enough.

“OKAY,” said Papyrus. “SO, WE HAVE CONFIRMED THAT YOUR NAME IS SANS.”

“i haven’t confirmed anythin’.”

“yea, that’s his name! just go straight to the important stuff!”

“BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT STUFF, BROTHER! WHAT IF WE HAVE CAUGHT THE WRONG GUY?”

Sans let a whimper of exasperation escape his lips. That was clearly the skeleton they were looking for. There was no doubt he was the other Sans. He and Sans were basically the same, the only differences were that the one they had caught was smaller and chubbier. It was just— so stupid.

“do whatever you want,” growled Sans, hiding his face behind another sandwich. “i don’t care. i was just tryna save you some time, but since you’re the expert, here...”

“YES! I AM THE EXPERT! SO YOU SHOULD SHUT UP, BROTHER!”

“oh, come on, don’t argue about me,” said the other Sans. “i don’t wanna bring conflict in the family.”

“SHUT UP!” the brothers yelled in unison.

The other Sans chuckled. “okay, okay. i’ll shut it. but i thought ya wanted me to talk.”

“YES, I DO WANT YOU TO SPILL THE BEANS! IF SOMEONE STOPPED INTERRUPTING, I WOULD BE ABLE TO INTERROGATE YOU AS IT IS EXPECTED OF A ROYAL GUARD OF MY CALIBER!”

Sans felt the strong urge to smash his brother’s head on a tree trunk, and he squished the sandwich he was holding to mush.

Sometimes he would have really liked to leave Papyrus to do things all alone and see how it was going to turn out with Asgore. That would have taught Papyrus that Sans understood more about being a Royal Guard than he did - at least Sans knew how to keep himself by not getting caught up in stupid missions.

“okay. i won’t talk anymore,” growled Sans, pushing down all the insults that were coming to his mind. There were so many.

Papyrus finally looked satisfied and focused his attention back on the other Sans.

“SO. NEXT QUESTION. DO YOU OWN A PET ROCK NAMED ROCKY?”

The other Sans gave Sans a quick glance. “yea,” he just said. “i feed him sprinkles. paps gave him to me when we moved to hour new house.”

“PAPS?”

“my bro. papyrus.”

“OH. WELL. YES, ERM... THAT WAS QUESTION NUMBER TWO. I THINK I SKIPPED IT ACCIDENTALLY.”

The other Sans lifted his bony eyebrows. “really?”

“YES! THE GREAT PAPYRUS NEVER LIES,” croaked Papyrus, giving a rapid look to his brother. He seemed uneasy around the subject of the other Sans having a family. “ANYWAYS. NEXT QUESTION! HAVE YOU BUILT A WORKING TIME-MACHINE?”

The other Sans’s features drooped. “uh. i have tried. but it doesn’t work. it never worked.” He took a deep sigh. “and it’s never gonna work, either.”

Sans felt a little pang of sympathy for his other self. That was the face of someone who had lost hope of escaping their fate. The other Sans thought he was never going to make the resets stop.

“mine’s worked, in the end,” said Sans, casually. “it just needed some adjustments. havin’ a fresh perspective on the work can help a lot. anyways. even if your machine is incomplete, we want it.”

The other Sans frowned. “for what?”

Papyrus grabbed his jaw and made him look at him. “WE ARE THE ONES ASKING QUESTIONS. SO- ERM ERM.” He went through the list another time. “DO PEOPLE EXPECT AN INVASION OF ANY KIND HERE?”

The other Sans’s eye sockets widened a little, and Sans covered his face with a hand.

“NOT THAT WE ARE PLANNING TO INVADE YOUR WORLD TO DIG FOR RESOURCES, CONQUER YOUR LANDS AND BRING YOU TO OUR WORLD AS UNWILLING WORKFORCE,” said Papyrus, correcting himself. “THAT’S NOT WHAT WE PLAN TO DO AT ALL.”

“you might as well tell him the size of your underwear, now that you’re at it!” yelled Sans, throwing the mushed sandwich towards his brother. 

It landed on the ground with a wet squelch. That was probably for the best. If Sans had gotten his brother’s suit dirty, that was the last thing he was going to do in his life.

“uh... tibia honest, i don’t think invadin’ our world is the best thing you can do, guys. we’re... um... always goin’ through the same routine, if you know what i mean,” whispered the other Sans.

Sans received the message and shrugged. What was he going to do about it? Yeah. Nothing. He had no saying in Asgore’s plans to bring new resources and souls to their dying world. He was just there to follow orders, and this tiny adventure in this world wasn’t going to mean anything, in the end. He had had his own resets to deal with. To each one his cross. It wasn’t his problem if the other Sans was still trapped in their own living hell. It was just how things were.

The other Sans should have been grateful for this small change in his life: if he was going to be taken to their world, he wasn’t going to be susceptible to his resets anymore. There were limits that even DT couldn’t conquer, and being in another world was one of those.

It was a shame that a monster like the other Sans was just free EXP waiting to be harvested. He wasn’t that bad of a guy, unluckily. Sans could see right through him. Even though the other Sans might have killed in other timelines, he still regretted it. Killing wasn’t in his nature. Someone like him would have been pulverized ages before in Sans’s world.

“so... um. there’s no reason for you to come here, guys. maybe, um- maybe we could give ya somethin’ to eat and you could leave us alone, how about that?” asked the other Sans, with a hesitant smile.

Sans looked the other way. It wasn’t his business if the other Sans and many more innocent monsters were going to be enslaved or die. He was just preventing himself and his brother from following the same fate - no hard feelings.

“i think we have enough information, for now,” said Sans.

“HM. MAYBE THERE STILL IS SOMETHING IMPORTANT WE MUST KNOW,” mumbled Papyrus, scratching his chin. He looked down at the other Sans, who was trying to hide his preoccupation behind his usual smile.

Sans could see the gears turning in his skull. He could bet the other was thinking about how to get back to his brother and keep him safe.

“uh- ‘m just a sentry. i don’t have access to the most interestin’ info, guys. so, like i told ya, you really picked the wrong guy.can i go home, now?”

“after hearin’ everythin’ you heard? nope,” said Sans.

He hopped down the rock he was sitting on and got closer to the other Sans and Papyrus.

There was a crackle of magic, and a sharp bone appeared in his right hand. 

“since you’re a nice guy, i’ll make it painless. just hold still for a second, would ya?”

The other Sans looked at him with a resigned expression. For a moment, he seemed extremely tired. Instead of pleading for his life, he let his skull rest against the tree bark and waited for the hit with his eye sockets closed.

Sans took a deep breath in and lifted the sharp bone.

“welp. here it goes. no hard feelings, pal.”

He was about to strike, when a hand wrapped tightly around his wrist.

“BROTHER, WAIT!”

Sans blinked. Papyrus had never stopped him from killing anyone.

“what is it?”

Papyrus looked at the other Sans, who had opened his eye sockets just a tad.

“YOU SHOULDN’T KILL HIM NOW,” said the tall skeleton, with a smug smile. “THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF TIME TO DO SO. BESIDES, IF HE HELPS YOU, WE WILL GET THE MACHINE RUNNING A LOT SOONER.”

Sans thought about it for a few seconds. He still didn’t like the idea of letting the other Sans go around with all that knowledge in his skull.

As if Papyrus had just read his mind, he knelt and took the other ketchup bottle.

“THIS SUBSTANCE SEEMS TO MAKE HIM DRUNK. HE HAS ALREADY GULPED DOWN ENOUGH OF THIS. MAYBE ANOTHER BOTTLE IS WHAT WE NEED TO MAKE HIM FORGET ABOUT ALL THE INCONVENIENT THINGS HE HEARD.”

The other Sans was now following their exchange with a surprised expression.

“you... you’re not gonna kill me?”

“PSHH. WE WILL DO IT SOONER OR LATER, DON’T WORRY. BUT KILLING YOU NOW WOULD JUST BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE. SO, YOU BETTER DRINK THIS TO THE LAST DROP.”

Papyrus put the bottle in the other Sans’s mouth. He almost choked on the ketchup, before swallowing it. His face got bluer and bluer, and his body more relaxed and pliant. When Papyrus freed him from the ropes, the other Sans met the snowy ground with a soft “thump”.

The brothers stared at him.

“at least, no one will believe the word of a drunk, even if he says somethin’.”

Sans looked at his brother. Papyrus seemed strangely relieved by the idea of not killing the other Sans right away. Had he gotten attached?

No. No, that wasn’t like him at all.

“what are we gonna do with him now?”

“WE CAN ALWAYS USE HIM AS A HOSTAGE.”

“hostage?”

No one cared about Sans in his world. He might as well have died a long time ago, and no one would have noticed his absence, at least not until a judgement was needed. 

But maybe, with this runt, it was different. Maybe someone cared about him, and that was something they could exploit.

“YES. WHAT IF WE FIND HIS PAPYRUS? DRAGGING HIM ON OUR SIDE IS THE BEST THING TO DO. HE MUST HAVE SOME INTEL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THIS WORLD, SINCE HE IS IN THE ROYAL GUARD - A HIGH CLASS INDIVIDUAL, VERY MUCH LIKE MYSELF.”

Sans thought that this plan was flawed at the base, since Papyrus didn’t give a damn about him, but whatever, if he wanted to try it, Sans wasn’t going to stop him.

“okay. we’ll do as you want.”

“YOU ARE STRANGELY ACCOMMODATING, BROTHER.”

Sans took a deep breath in. 

“i don’t give a fuck if i have to kill him, you know that, right?”

“YES, OF COURSE.”

“then, we don’t have anythin’ to talk about. since you want him alive so badly, you’ll carry him. i’ll go take a nap. replenish my magic, or whatever.”

Sans slid inside a tent and Papyrus was left alone with the other Sans.

Chapter Text

Papyrus poked the drunk skeleton with his boot.

“GET UP, PATHETIC HEAP OF BONES. WE HAVE WORK TO DO, AND YOU’RE FILTHY. I DON’T WANT TO CARRY YOU ON MY BACK.”

The other Sans groaned weakly. “paps, don’t shout... my skull hurts...”

Papyrus felt a weird wave of warmth in his ribcage. He hadn’t heard his brother call him “paps” in ages, especially with that soft tone.

“Is this low enough for your fragile, pitiful ears?”

The other Sans nodded.

“Well, then. Get up.”

“nooo...”

“GET UP!”

“don’t shooouuut...”

Papyrus stomped a foot on the ground out of exasperation and decided to intervene. He was going to get his cloak dirty after all.

He picked the other Sans up and put him over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes. His body was more fragile than Sans’s, the bones thinner, and his abdomen, pressing on Papyrus’s shoulder, felt like a magical pillow.

However, pressing his shoulder bone in the other Sans’s stomach hadn’t been the smartest move.

“hrk... i feel like ‘m gonna throw up...”

“OH, NO, YOU DON’T!”

Papyrus held the small skeleton at a safe distance. The other Sans’s head lolled on his chest, and he burped.

“it passed,” he slurred, with a dopey smile.

Papyrus gave him a crooked look. “THROW UP ON MY SCARF AND IT WILL BE THE VERY LAST THING YOU DO.”

“i didn’t mean to, bro.”

Papyrus sighed and tried to put the other Sans in a more comfortable position. The small skeleton rested his skull on his shoulder and snuggled against him.

“DON’T DO THAT.”

“do what?”

An uncomfortable red glow crept up on Papyrus’s skull.

“THIS ISN’T APPROPRIATE.”

“c’mon, you always carry me around, of course it’s appor... approp... a-approt...” 

“APPROPRIATE.”

“yea, that word.” The other Sans yawned. “it’s been a real weird day, today.”

“WHY IS THAT?” asked Papyrus, looking at his brother’s tent. Maybe he should have let Sans kill his counterpart. The other Sans was really indecorous, and Papyrus didn’t want to be his nanny.

“i met two guys that looked like us. hehe. so weeeird.”

“YES. REALLY WEIRD.”

“they wanted to... to... um... do somethin’. but, uh, i don’t remember all that much.” A hiccup went through the other Sans’s small frame, making him laugh like an idiot. “i guess ‘m drunk. ‘m glad you’re my babysitter.”

“YEAH, REALLY GLAD.”

“love ya.”

Papyrus felt a knot in his invisible throat. The other Sans was more than indecorous. This was just… just plain rude. How dare he try to make the Great and Terrible Papyrus feel embarrassed?

“paps?”

“WHAT?”

“is everythin’ okay?”

“I AM ALWAYS OKAY. I AM THE GREAT - AND TERRIBLE - PAPYRUS AFTER ALL.”

“aw, paps, you’re not terrible. you’re, like, the coolest guy i know. and i know lotsa people.” The other Sans yawned again and awkwardly patted Papyrus’s face with one of his tiny hands.

Papyrus lifted his chin to get away from the vicious attack. “WHY DON’T YOU SLEEP A LITTLE, NOW?”

“good idea. ‘m really tired.”

The other Sans, who could barely keep his eye sockets open, hid his face in Papyrus’s jacket.

“g’night.”

A moment later, he was snoring softly on Papyrus’s chest. The tall skeleton got up and walked towards his tent. He didn’t want to stay with the other Sans a moment longer.

The tall skeleton put the other Sans on the ground and stared at him as if he was highly radioactive. 

He exited the tent. 

Then, he came back and put his cover on the other Sans. If that sorry creature died because of a cold, this was all going to be pointless. It wasn’t like Papyrus cared.

Finally, he exited the tent again, and went on to better explore the place, waiting for his Sans to regain some stamina.

When they found the other Papyrus, it was around five in the afternoon. The tall skeleton was running around, calling his brother’s name with increasing worry. Usually the other Sans vanished for long periods of time because of a walk in the woods or a burger at Grillby’s, but he was always back at his station around five o’clock, and the other Papyrus was getting really cranked up about it.

“SANS! SANS, WHERE ARE YOU? IF THIS IS A PRANK, IT’S NOT FUNNY!”

The other Papyrus looked under his brother’s station, then he went through all the snowpoffs and he even checked under the rocks. No Sanses in sight.

He sat down in the snow and took a deep sigh. No big deal. No big deal! He just had to wait a little longer. Sans was going to show up in no time.

“ERM-ERM.”

Papyrus lifted his gaze.

Two skeletons were looking down at him, one small but sturdy, the other tall and athletic. They were wearing black clothes and looked like they came from the depths of the earth, where the most dangerous kind of monsters still lurked on their own, cut from society. The tall one had three deep scars on his left eyesocket, as if some kind of creature had clawed him; while the smaller one had a shimmering, golden tooth where his canine should have been.

However the other Papyrus didn’t care about all that. He was far more worried about the lump of clothes held by the tall skeleton.

“SANS!”

He picked him up and gave him a squeeze. The other Sans moaned in discomfort. His skull was bluer than usual, and he was hot. 

“hn... puh-paps...?”

His hazy eye lights told the other Papyrus that his brother was in black-out drunk conditions.

Oh, Papyrus was going to be so angry with him... later.

“THANK YOU FOR BRINGING MY BROTHER BACK, KIND FOREIGNERS! WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?”

“well-”

“SHUT UP, BROTHER. LET ME HANDLE THIS ONE.”

The tall, leather-wearing skeleton pushed the small one aside, cleared his throat and held out his right hand.

“I AM VERY GLAD TO MEET MY COUNTERPART OF THIS WORLD. I, THE GREAT AND EXCEPTIONALLY TERRIFYING PAPYRUS, LIEUTENANT OF THE ROYAL GUARD - and my pathetic brother Sans - HAVE COME HERE TO VISIT THIS WRETCHED PLACE IN QUALITY OF PEACEFUL TOURISTS. SO, WE WOULD BE GLAD IF YOU COULD HELP US MAKE OURSELVES AT HOME FOR A WHILE.”

The other Papyrus stared at him for a long instant.

Sans took a deep sigh. He knew it. It wasn’t going to work. Of course it wasn’t, no one could believe that their counterpart from another timeline was-

“WOWIE! THAT’S INCREDIBLE! ‘LIEUTENANT’! OF COURSE I CANNOT EXPECT ANYTHING LESS FROM MY EXCELLENT OTHER SELF!” The other Papyrus held tightly the hand offered to him and smiled. “I MYSELF AM NOT OFFICIALLY IN THE ROYAL GUARD, BUT THE WHOLE UNDERGROUND RESTS ON MY SHOULDERS, AND I AM KEPT IN GREAT ESTEEM BY EVERY MEMBER OF OUR SOCIETY! THE GREAT PAPYRUS WILL BE HAPPY TO HELP YOU! WE HAVE SOME SPACE AT HOME, IF YOU WANT. YOU CAN SLEEP ON THE COUCH. I HOPE IT WILL BE COMFORTABLE ENOUGH TO MEET YOUR HIGH STANDARDS, OTHERWISE I WILL LEND YOU MY BED.”

Papyrus gave Sans a smug smile, as if to say “SEE? WHAT DID I TELL YOU?”.

Then, he turned towards the other Papyrus.

“I WILL BE ENTHUSED TO ENJOY YOUR COUCH, GREAT OTHER ME. I HOPE THERE WILL BE SOME SPACE EVEN FOR MY TRASHY BROTHER. HE STINKS, THOUGH. SO, ON SECOND THOUGHT, IT WILL BE A WISE ENOUGH MOVE TO PUT HIM IN THE SHED, IF YOU HAVE ONE.”

“OF COURSE! But... uh… THAT IS MY PRISON, RESERVED FOR HUMANS ONLY. MAYBE YOUR BROTHER COULD SLEEP TOGETHER WITH MINE? THERE’S ENOUGH SPACE IN HIS BED, AND SANS DOESN’T MIND STINK AT ALL. HE HIMSELF REEKS OF KETCHUP MOST OF THE TIME.”

“okay, guys, listen, ‘m not gonna share my personal space with that dweeb-”

“IT IS DECIDED, THEN! WE WILL SLEEP AT YOUR HOUSE! THANK YOU FOR THE HELP, OTHER ME.”

“YOU’RE WELCOME! AND DON’T BE SAD,” said the other Papyrus, giving Sans a pat on the head. “MY BROTHER IS QUITE NICE, AND HIS SNORING NOT THAT LOUD. YOU’LL SLEEP FINE.”

The other Papyrus showed them the road to home, and Papyrus followed him without hesitation.

Sans, on the other hand, needed a few minutes to gain back composure after that loving pat on the skull.

Chapter Text

This was good. They had already gained access to the brothers’ home and were now blending with the locals. No one was going to pay much attention to them, if Sans and Papyrus said they were cousins coming there to visit.

The plan was running smoothly.

And yet, Sans was nervous. He couldn’t stop smoking one cigarette after the other. 

In that moment he was sitting at Papyrus’s side, and they both had the same, rigid pose.

The brothers were looking at their alternate selves and, even if the show was unsettling to say the least, they weren’t able to look away, like in a horror movie.

The other Papyrus had tucked the other Sans in a warm blanket, and he had prepared him something to eat to help absorb the eccessive amount of ketchup and clear his mind.

The other Sans meekly accepted the sandwich Papyrus had given him, and ate it slowly. He seemed on the verge of falling asleep at any time and, after he finished the meal, he curled up and started snoring.

The other Papyrus picked the other Sans up. He made Sans sign to follow him.

“COME WITH US, OTHER BROTHER! I’LL SHOW YOU SANS’S ROOM! AND MAYBE HELP CLEAN A SPOT FOR YOU IN IT... IT’S SO FILTHY. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I TELL SANS TO CLEAN IT, HE ALWAYS FINDS AN EXCUSE TO NOT DO ANY WORK.”

Sans smiled a little. That sounded a lot like him. He got up, put his sigarette in the ashtray and followed the other Papyrus up the stairs.

The other Sans’s room was a mess, but not as terrible as Sans’s room was. There were no blood stains of when he had come home with a wound, nor signs of any discomfort at all. The place gave a good sleepy vibe, and the bed was the softest Sans had ever seen. 

The other Papyrus put his brother to bed, tucking him again in the covers. The other Sans groaned weakly, trying to hang onto him.

Sans felt a knot in his throat. He didn’t want to see all that sappy bullshit. He just wanted to sleep.

The other Papyrus finally decided to let go, and the other Sans mumbled something incomprehensible, before falling back asleep.

The other Papyrus got up and stared at his brother with his hands on his hips. He took a deep sigh.

“He always comes home wasted, these days. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He wasn’t like this, once,” he whispered. He turned towards Sans. His smile was a little strained. “Here, have a pillow. You can rest, if you want.”

The other Papyrus moved the other Sans in order to make some space, and put a pillow on the side of the bed, where the other Sans’s legs were too short to reach. There was plenty of room, in there.

Sans swallowed and took off his padded jacket. A cloud of glistening monster dust rose from it when it hit the ground. Sans chocked, barely muffling a scream of surprise, and he tried to disperse the dust while the other Papyrus was still busy looking at his brother.

shit shit shit!

Sans picked the jacket up and he turned around just in time to hide it behind his back with a big, fake smile on his face.

“uh- i think i’ll- i’ll go take a shower, if that’s okay!”

“YES, OF COURSE. THE BATHROOM IS ON THE LEFT.”

Sans nodded and skedaddled out of the room, hoping that the other Papyrus wasn’t going to notice the particles he was leaving all over the place.

Sans had almost forgotten that, right before going home to pack a few things, he had had a bad quarrel with a Snowdrake passing by his station. It had been a stupid dispute about how Sans had invaded the territory of the Snowdrakes just by doing his job at the sentry station. Sans had been doing that job for years without a complaint from them... and that day, for no good fucking reason, they had decided to pick on him.

Sans hadn’t exactly been in a patient mood, and the Snowdrake just had to make things physical. Sans had to defend himself. The Snowdrake had managed to land a hit that had taken 3HP off of him, before getting pulverized by Sans’s Blaster. Since the guy had had some LV, he had been eradicated by a single blow.

On the other hand, Sans had felt the panic of receiving a hit. It had never happened to him. He had always managed to dodge the attacks, since he had had to become an expert when he was a kid and still had 1HP.

His stats were much higher now, around 20 HP, even though they were still abysmal compared to his brother’s or to any other monster who had managed to gain some EXP along the way.

If that Snowdrake had hit him when he used to be weaker, he would have just turned to dust, without even falling down.

Sans entered the bathroom and closed the door behind his shoulders. He locked it. The bathroom was all in pink and blue, with a soft carpet on the ground and a luxurious bathtub. Sans took off his clothes and threw his jacket in the sink, planning to clean it later. 

He sat down in the bathtub and let hot water fill it. Something squeaked under his right femur, and he noticed a bone made out of rubber. 

what the-

Sans picked the toy up and gave it another squeeze. It had a happy face painted on top of it.

Sans sighed and let the rubber bone float on the water, following its trajectory with his eye lights. That had to belong to the other Papyrus. He was really different from how Sans had imagined him. He remembered Sans of how his brother had used to be when he was little. They were really close, back then. 

Things had gone sour after Papyrus had joined the Royal Guard. After that, he had started to treat Sans like garbage too. At the beginning it was more to push Sans to get better and protect himself; however, as time passed, Papyrus had become colder and more distant.

Sans had stopped trying to rekindle things with him. With the resets, both Flowey’s and the Frisk’s, it was pointless anyway. Now those had stopped, but Sans still didn’t want to commit. He was so tired. He couldn’t find in himself the strength to try, in the remote chance that something went wrong and he made things even worse. Without resets, there wasn’t any chance to fix mistakes. 

Sans scrubbed the remaining dust off his bones and took a deep sigh, as the water ran down the drain.

He got up and took the other Sans’s towel. He wasn’t going to mind.

Sans cleaned the jacket’s fur to get all the dust off as well and put it under his arm.

He teleported back in the room and threw the jacket on the trend-mill in the middle of the room so it could dry.

It had been a long day. He just wanted to sleep.

He went through the other Sans’s shirts and shorts and put on the darkest things he found, without any bones stamps or puns on them. He had a reputation to uphold.

Sans dragged himself to bed and slid under the covers. Normally he would have been nervous to share his sleeping space with someone that could have slit his cervical vertebrae while he was asleep, but the other Sans was far too drunk to be a menace. Besides, Sans knew he wasn’t the kind of monster to kill. One really had to push him to obtain a reaction, especially a violent one.

With that last thought, Sans yawned and he closed his eye sockets, hoping for a dreamless sleep.

.

.

.

A soft weight poked his ribs.

Sans blinked and he was completely awake in a matter of half a second. He had already evoked a sharp bone to kill the one who had ambushed him in his sleep, when he realized it was just the other Sans.

The ball of clothes and bones had shifted in his sleep and was now laying his skull on Sans’s stomach. He was hugging his pillow, snoring with his mouth open, and had mistaken Sans’s belly for another pillow.

“gah! get off, sack of bones!”

Sans gave him a kick, and the other Sans groaned, waking up. He massaged his shoulder, confused on what had just happened.

“sleep on the part of the bed that’s yours!”

Sans gave him another push and the other Sans fell off the bed.

“oof!”

The other Sans struggled to get up, waving his feet like a bug. Then he managed climb back up on the bed and he looked at Sans, furrowing his bony eyebrows.

“the hell’s wrong with ya?! i was just sleepin’,” he mumbled, and his eye lights became hazy and sleepy. “uh… what’re ya doin’ in my bed?”

“your bro let me sleep here.”

The other Sans scratched his skull and nodded. Then, he hid himself under the blankets and curled up like a cat.

“’s too soon to get up. go back to sleep...” he mumbled, before deciding to give the good example and falling asleep himself.

Sans however was already too awake to lose consciousness again. He watched the other Sans sleep for a while, experimentally poking his cheekbone to see if he reacted.

Nothing at all.

He was out cold, again.

His ability to fall asleep was impressive.

Sans was fascinated by how trusting the other Sans was. He didn’t even remember the last time he had trusted someone enough to make himself vulnerable like that.

“hey, uh...” Sans thought about how to call him. He couldn’t just call him “Sans”. It was weird. He had to find a nickname. However, naming things meant getting attached, so he had to think about something else. An insult was probably going to do the trick. “bonehead. wake up.”

“hmn?”

“how can you can sleep like this? aren’t you afraid of the consequences of lowerin’ your guard?”

“’s not gonna change anythin’,” whispered the other Sans, without opening his eye sockets. “she’s gonna kill me anyway, if she really wants to. so, might as well sleep through it. besides, sleepin’ with company makes it easier to relax. i don’t feel as alone as i usually do. i don’t… have… as many nightm’res…” The other Sans yawned and his words became more and more confused. “... with someone else around... what ‘bout... you?”

Sans blinked. She? Did the other Sans mean the kid? Of course he did. But… kill? 

What kind of kid had he dealt with?

Sans’s kid wasn’t anything like that. She was… well, she was an idiot who thought she could change their worldview by giving them hugs and cookies. Like the other Sans. 

Come to think of it, they would have liked each other.

Sans scratched his cheekbone and grinned. Maybe this world wasn’t as happy as he had thought. It seemed as if a fragment of Sans’s own world had found its way there: a little shard of rottenness, eating the apple from its insides. 

Or maybe the other Sans was just really, really drunk.

“i don’t really sleep, dude. s’ full of people wantin’ to get ya, where i live. i came here mainly ‘cause i wanted a good night’s sleep. you know, like on a vacation.”

The other Sans laughed under his breath, without opening his eye sockets.

“sorry, but i don’t think here’s all sunshine and roses. give it a few days, and the kid will get bored and restart everythin’. kill a few of us…” Sans yawned again and he rubbed his eye sockets, trying to stay awake. His eye lights were dim and he looked extremely tired, and not of the kind of tired that could be fixed with a good sleep. “…or, maybe, all of us. who knows. it’s always on a roll of a dice. i tried to fix things, yanno? i really tried, but nothin’ works. i’ve even told paps what’s goin’ on, so many times. but he always forgets. and i just can’t do it anymore.” The other Sans covered his face with a hand and took a deep, trembling sigh. “i don’t even know why ‘m tellin’ this to ya. ’s not like ya can do something ‘bout it.”

Sans chuckled, giving him his best snarky grin.

“who knows, maybe i can… but, um… maybe you’re tellin’ me   these things ‘cause we’re the same person, and you only trust yourself.”

The other Sans sighed. “myself is the last person i’d trust. i‘m a bad monster, ya know?”

Sans laughed, and it was more sincere than usual. “you, a bad monster? oh, please. ya might be a little messed up in the head, but you’re far from bein’ a bad monster.”

And that was the problem. The other Sans wasn’t a bad monster. He remembered Sans of a younger version of himself, when he still was worth something. Probably the other people of this version of the Underground weren’t that bad as well. 

Sans’s magic stirred uncomfortably. Why was he having this kind of thoughts? They were stupid and useless. It didn’t matter if they were good monsters. He and Papyrus were there for a job, and he had to keep it in mind.

However, for someone who hadn’t felt anything in ages, Sans was feeling a concerning amount of sympathy for his other self. The other Sans just sounded so hopeless and tired. It was like looking in a mirror… hm. Maybe his concern was all born out of narcissism. Yeah, that was it. He wasn’t capable of good, genuine feelings anymore.

“ya have no idea of the things i did,” the other Sans whispered. His voice was barely audible, and he was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. 

“you saw my LV. i mean, you don’t get to seven without fuckin’ your soul up real bad, bud. so, believe me, you’re the one who has no idea what he’s talkin’ ‘bout.”

They stayed in silence for a while. Sans had thought his other self had fallen asleep, when he heard him whisper:

“we’re one fucked up guy, huh?”

“yea. ya can say that.”

Chapter Text

Papyrus waited until 5.59 in the morning before barging inside the other Sans’s room. 

“WAKE UP YOU LAZY SLOBS!” He screamed at the top of his lungs - err… ribs. “YOU HAVE TO HELP WITH THE BREAKFAST ACTIVITIES!”

Sans jumped out of his metaphorical skin and ended up on the ground, tangled in the covers, while the other Sans didn’t react at all. 

Papyrus felt a weird constriction in his stomach and got closer to the bed. If the other Sans had died due to ketchup overdose, it was going to be a problem. 

Papyrus poked the small skeleton’s face with a boot, and the only response he received was sleepy mumbling.

“OH MY GOD, HOW CAN HE SLEEP THROUGH THIS?” 

“i know right,” said Sans, giving his double an amused look.

He had finally managed to free himself from the nest of covers, and was now putting his jacket back on. “he wouldn’t wake even if you pointed a knife to his cervical vertebrae.”

“WELL, HE HAS TO GET OUT OF BED SOMEHOW!”

Sans sighed. He always had to do all the heavy work.

“lemme do it, boss. i’ll be quick and efficient.”

And, as he said so, he graced the other Sans with a kick in the ribs.

“yo, bonehead! wake the fuck up!”

“SANS!” Papyrus slapped him on the back of his skull, taking a groan of pain out of him. “THIS PATHETIC CREATURE ONLY HAS 1 HP! ARE YOU TRYING TO DUST HIM AND RUIN OUR MISSION?”

“n-no! i—“

A weak groan came from the other Sans, as he massaged his  sore ribs.

“i was wakin’ up…” he mumbled, rubbing his eyelids. “i just needed a few more minutes…”

“WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT! WE HAVE MANY THINGS TO DO TODAY!“

“please, don’t shout,” whispered the other Sans, pressing his hands on the sides of his skull. “’s like i have a hammer in my head. it hurts so much…”

“’s what happens when ya get yourself hammered.”

The other Sans blinked, then he got it. “heh. hammered. i, uh… don’t even remember what happened. the last time i drank this much i was still workin’ for g… hn…”

Papyrus’s face contracted into a forced smile. 

“YOU’RE A PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A SENTRY! YOU SHOULDN’T DRINK ON YOUR JOB! (Because that’s what happened, a 100% true.)” 

“yea. you offered us a few drinks, but i would’ve never thought that you’d be the one to get wasted. that’s my job, right, boss? bein’ a waste?”

Papyrus’s awkward expression shifted into a disgusted scowl.

“YES. THAT’S VERY TRUE, UNFORTUNATELY. YOU THOROUGHLY ENJOY RUINING MY HARD-EARNED REPUTATION, DON’T YOU, BROTHER?”

Sans winked.  “just a little bit. no one’s perfect, and i’m the skeleton in the great and terrible lieutenant’s closet.”

“SANS, STOP PLAGUING MY LIFE WITH REPETITIVE AND TASTELESS COMEDY, OR I’LL-“

“hey, guys, no need to fight,” said a low, sleepy voice.

The other Sans squished himself between them, trying to divide them before they could start quarreling.

“’s a beautiful day… no punchin’, okay?”

“i didn’t receive the notice you were my new boss, fatty.”

Sans gave a nudge to the other Sans’s soft stomach. The hit made him wince. 

“ow. no need for violence, man.” 

“no need for violence… do ya even hear yourself talkin’?” Sans rolled his eye lights. “you’re such a wimp, i haven’t even hit you that hard.”

The other Sans massaged his stomach and sighed.

“you kinda remember me of undyne, edgy me.” He kept quiet  for a few seconds, then he said: “how am i even goin’ to call you two, anyway? “paps” and “sans” would just be too confusing… oh, i know! what about a nickname? the first thing that comes to mind… hmm… let’s see… loom and gloom sounds kinda nice.” 

“WHAT?”

“don’t you dare.”

“it is chosen, then!” exclaimed the other Sans, with a big smile. He patted Papyrus on one of his spiky shoulder-pads. “i think they fit ya both really well.”

“IF YOU TRY TO CALL ME “LOOM” IN PUBLIC, YOU PITIFUL, DISGUSTING-“

“oh, c’mon, relax. ’s just for fun. ya can call me however ya want in return, if ya’d like. so we’d be even.”

Papyrus’s aura was so deeply imbued with murderous intent that Sans, even though he had been pretty peeved at his other self just a few seconds before, felt the need to pass an arm around his shoulders and get him as far as he could from his brother. 

“i don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my bro’s kinda an uptight guy,” he whispered in his double’s skull. “if you go around callin’ him silly names, he might consider the idea of, i don’t know… dust you on the spot?”

The other Sans grinned. “chill, gloom, i’m sure he’d never hurt me. i look too much like you, yanno? we’re brothers, for, um, association. besides… you’re here for a breather from your world or not? try to take out that stick up your coccyx, would ya?”

Sans groaned and covered his face with a hand. That guy was going to get himself killed before they could even start working on the machine, wasn’t he?

The other Sans smiled to Papyrus. “if ya don’t like to be called “loom”, maybe “papy” would be better? i usually call my bro pap or paps, and i used “papy” when we were kids. papy’s different enough, if you don’t feel comfortable with-“

“LOOM IS PERFECTLY FINE!”

“but “papy” is…”

“NO! I WILL TAKE ‘LOOM’, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!”

Papyrus’s skull was so red it was glistening.

“NOW EXCUSE ME, BUT BREAKFAST NEEDS MY EXPERTISE.”

And he ran out of the room, slamming the door.

“huh,” chuckled the other Sans. “reverse psychology. always works with him. he is emotionally constipated, or is it just my impression?”

“well… yea. i mean- no! what the fuck! stop messin’ with ‘im! do ya have a death wish?”

The other Sans lifted a bony eyebrow. “why?”

“‘cause he’s murdered for a lot less, ya dingus!” Sans growled,  poking the other Sans’s ribs with one of his claws. “didn’t ya see his LV? ’s a lot higher than mine!”

The other Sans’s smile drooped a little. “yea, i’ve seen it.”

“then stop provokin’ him! high LV makes ya have difficulty controllin’ your worst impulses, murder drive included. ya should know this. ain’t ya the judge here?”

The other Sans avoided his stare. “yea, i used to be… years, and hundreds of resets ago.” He sighed. “but your paps is still a version of my bro, yanno? i can’t really see him as, i don’t know, some kinda bloodthirsty monster. i know there’s still some good in him, somewhere. don’t ya see it?”

Sans shook his head. If only things were so simple. “ya see only what you wanna see, bud.”

“if you say so…” the other Sans rubbed a hand on his skull. That headache was killing him. “if you wanna know, i don’t think you’re that bad of a guy either.“

“breakfast. now.”

“but-“

“breakfast.”

When they got downstairs, the Papyruses had already set the table. A tower of burnt pancakes was waiting to be served.

Both Sanses winced when the smell of crimes against the art of cooking reached their nasal cavities.

“from this we can deduce that it’s a common thing our bros suck at cookin’. it must be a constant among timelines, a manifestation of the freakin’ fibonacci sequence,” the other Sans whispered, playfully nudging Sans in the ribs. “i like to call it the ‘thank the gods there’s grillbz’ constant.”

Sans growled in response, giving a wary look to his double. The idiot seemed unfazed by Sans’s constant warnings to not invade his personal space. Not that his pathetic version could ever be of any harm to him, but that playfulness was more disturbing than being threatened with a pocket knife.

“yea,” Sans mumbled. “he’s not very good… in this, at least. but the few times we had enough food to turn on the cooker, he refused to let me cook. welp. who cares. i just hafta do what boss says.”

The other Sans lifted his bony eyebrows. “boss? ’s not the first time ya call him like that. why…?”

“‘cause he’s the lieutenant of the royal guard and he’s my boss, duh. he isn’t goin’ to do an exception for me, yanno? give me  a special treatment just ‘cause i’m his brother.”

“but you’re not at work, now,” the other Sans said, talking slowly, as if he was trying to explain a logical fallacy to a child.

Sans shrugged. “do ya think he cares? he always brought his work at home, anyway… told ya he’s kinda uptight. but whatever, i just don’t want to piss him off, so i try my best to stay in my place.”

The other Sans seemed more and more uneasy. 

Sans felt his stare on the back of his skull as they went down the stairs.

“what?” he hissed in the end, exasperated by the unwanted attention.

“that collar you're wearin’,” the other Sans whispered. “what’s it for? is it a freakin’ dog collar?”

Sans desired intensely to disappear, but it wasn’t going to happen, just like every other time someone had made him that awkward question.

It wasn’t an uncommon practice for someone to use restrictive collars on people, but they were mostly used on criminals - well, criminals among criminals, la crème de la crème - and on violent and difficult to control monsters. 

Sans’s collar had used to be something far darker in the past: Papyrus had had to find a way to force him to do stuff he didn’t want to do after all the shit he’d been through with Gaster - like keep being alive -, so he had taken pretty strict measures. 

A monster had to have a really strong will to impose their magic on another monster. Usually it was done through an object, something the subject was always forced to carry around with them - a collar, a pair of handcuffs, or whatever the choice. Papyrus had chosen that collar mostly because there wasn’t anything else around - and because he had a particularly cynical sense of humor, when he really wanted. 

Sans had been the receiving end of many of Papyrus’s crazy training methods to make him stronger. It was his brother’s own, disturbing way of taking care of Sans, and that stupid collar was just one of many. Deep down, however, Sans appreciated those attentions, even though he resented Papyrus for his roughness.

As of now, his collar was nothing more than an object he carried with him out of habit and, even though Sans would have never admitted it, because he had grown attached to it - it was the only gift Papyrus had ever given him since he had joined the Royal Guard. 

Anyways, Sans often forgot about the collar. He felt awkward about it just when someone asked why he had one, a little part of him dying every single time.

Thank god the true reason why he had obtained it wasn’t a problem anymore, so it didn’t hurt as much to be aware of how weak he was underneath his spiky appearance.

However, he didn’t say anything of all this to the other Sans, and he just offered him a grin. He waved a finger in his direction, demanding him to get closer.

The other Sans lifted a bony eyebrow.

“c’mhere, ’s not like i can tell a secret aloud, bonehead,” Sans whispered.

The small skeleton obeyed and, since the other Papyrus was still giving them his back, Sans took the liberty of squeezing the other Sans under his arm, blocking him in an uncomfortable position.

“here’s the secret to have success in your life, smiley face,” he breathed in his skull. “mind. your. fuckin’. business.” 

“i gather you don’t like bein’ asked ‘bout your collar, then,” the other Sans said, gently undoing his grip, as if he hadn’t felt the menace in his voice at all. He put Sans’s hand back in his pocket and patted it. “but ya shouldn’t be like this. one can’t even make a little chat with ya that you’re already all murder. weren’t you on vacation?”

Sans was so baffled he needed a few seconds to put his grin back on.

“just don’t ask ‘bout the collar.”

The other Sans rolled his eye lights. “yea, whatever ya want, gloom,” he said, pinching his cheekbone. 

this guy really has a death wish, thought Sans, as he pondered about biting his fingers off.

The other Sans dragged himself towards the table and sat down. In the same moment his bottom met the wood of the chair, the other Papyrus turned around with his hands on his hips. 

Chapter Text

“BROTHER!” 

“hng— tone it down a little, please… my head is killin’ me,” the other Sans moaned, hiding under the hood of his puffy jacket.

The other Papyrus tapped on the floor with his right foot. That wasn’t a good sign. In Sans’s vocabulary it meant an ass kicking was coming his way.

“YOU CAME HOME DRUNK YESTERDAY, AND IT WASN’T EVEN PAST TEA TIME,” the tall skeleton continued, without lowering his voice of a single decibel. “YOU WERE SO OUT OF YOUR MIND YOU DROOLED ALL OVER MY SCARF! I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU. I THOUGHT WE HAD AGREED YOU WOULDN’T DRINK MORE THAN A KETCHUP BOTTLE A DAY, IF YOU REALLY CAN’T CONTAIN YOURSELF. ONLY ONE.”

The other Sans took a deep sigh underneath his hood, and he mumbled something incomprehensible.

“‘rry… ‘kay’…”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

“‘m sorry, okay? i’m sorry, paps. but i don’t even remember what happened. all i know is that yesterday i woke up to bring some sandwiches to the old lady and have a little party with her, and then… i think i drank ketchup with loom and gloom?”

The other Papyrus frowned, confused.

“LOOM AND GLUE? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, BROTHER?”

“loom and gloom. yanno, our doubles. i had to find a nickname, or we’re gonna go crazy, hehe… heh…” The other Sans’s voice faded, as he saw his brother’s stern expression.

“I’M STILL MAD AT YOU.”

“aw, c’mon…”

“NO. NO AMOUNT OF SAD EYEING AND TEARY LOOKS WILL SWAY ME THIS TIME, SANS. YOU’RE CUT OFF ON KETCHUP, I’LL CALL GRILLBY AND TELL HIM TO REFUSE TO SELL YOU ANY OF THAT BLOODY STUFF. AND- OH, COME ON, STOP MAKING THAT FACE. YOU’RE GOING TO SURVIVE, BROTHER.”

“but-” the other Sans said. All he missed was a quivering lip, and he would have been the portrait of misery itself. “paps…”

“NO PAPS! THIS IS MY FINAL WORD!”

The other Sans took a deep breath in and his shoulders slouched. “fine… if ya really hafta, call grillbz. maybe you’re right. i don’t want this to become another problem. i already have enough of those.”

The other Papyrus’s expression darkened as he got closer. 

There it is, Sans thought, already on the edge of his seat, greedily rubbing his hands. Some good old violence to—

“COME HERE, SAD LUMP,” the other Papyrus said, picking his brother up. He hugged him under Sans’s incredulous stare. “IT’S ALRIGHT, I’M NOT REALLY MAD… I’M JUST… WORRIED, YOU KNOW? I DON’T WANT YOU TO HURT YOURSELF.”

“i know,” the other Sans said. “i’m sorry too.”

He put his skull on the other Papyrus’s shoulder to find some comfort. “i’ll try to stay away from the stuff for a while.”

“no, no, no,” Sans said, interrupting their conversation. “wait a minute. what the fuck is this shit?”

The brothers gave him a confused stare, still in the middle of a hug. 

“gloom? what’s wrong?”

Sans blinked a few times, sure he had misheard. A semi-hysterical laugh left his lipless mouth.

“what’s— he’s askin’ me what’s—- this! this is what’s wrong! this is all wrong!” He said, pointing at them.

The two skeletons still looked as confused as before. 

“gah! tell’em, boss. tell’em what’s wrong.”

Papyrus, who had been staring at the scene himself, too disgusted to intervene, finally stepped in to fix the obscene deeds the other skeletons were performing.

“THIS ISN’T THE RIGHT WAY TO FIX THINGS WITH YOUR BROTHER, OTHER ME,” he said, shaking his head in pity. “SINCE I AM AN EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD SOLDIER, I WILL EXPLAIN HOW DISCIPLINE WORKS TO YOU BOTH.”

Before the other Papyrus could protest, Papyrus took the other Sans from his arms and, keeping him at arm length, he deposited the small skeleton on the ground.

“uh… loom? what are ya—”

“HUSH, FEEBLEMINDED CREATURE,” Papyrus said, putting a gloved finger on his teeth. He then shifted his attention towards the other Papyrus. “YOU SEE, HUGGING IS POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT, OTHER ME. YOU MUST NOT GIVE REWARDS WHEN YOUR BROTHER MISBEHAVES, OR HE’LL DO IT AGAIN, BECAUSE THERE AREN’T ANY CONSEQUENCES.” 

“this… is really awkward,” the other Sans said, scratching his skull.

“YOU CLEARLY CAN’T COMPREHEND THE MEANING OF ‘HUSH’, SO I’LL USE A SYNONYM: ‘KEEP QUIET FOR A MINUTE’, PATHETIC BEING.”

“loom, come on, ya can’t be seriou—”

Papyrus picked him up so he could hold a gloved hand over his mouth, muffling any other protest. He then gave a rigid smile to the other Papyrus, who was looking at him as if he was an alien.

“AS I WAS SAYING, YOU SHOULDN’T REWARD YOUR BROTHER WHEN HE DOES SOMETHING WRONG - FOR EXAMPLE, TALKING OVER VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE SUCH AS MYSELF. IF YOU CONTINUE LIKE THIS, YOU WILL END UP WITH AN UNEDUCATED, TRASH-TALKING TROLL WHO’S TOO SOFT TO EVEN DEFEND HIMSELF, AS IT IS CLEAR THIS… THIS BEING IS.”

The other Sans laughed under Papyrus’s glove. “is that what i am to ya? your mind must be a really funny place, loom, ya must make me visit someday, or at least send me a postcar— hmnff!”

“SO, SINCE HE MISBEHAVED, YOU SHOULD PUNISH HIM.”

“PUNISH HIM?” The other Papyrus repeated, giving him an uneasy look. “HOW?”

“YOU COULD START BY HITTING HIM ON THE BACK OF HIS HEAD. SANS, COME HERE. LET ME SHOW THEM.”

“but i didn’t even do anythin’! why am i the one gettin’ punished?!”

A deadly stare from his brother was enough to make him drag his snickers towards them, grumbling under his breath.

“for fuck’s sake, why is it always me?” 

“’s just karma,” the other Sans said, winking.

“shuddup, bonehead. i’ll thrash you- ow!”

Sans rubbed the back of his skull, where Papyrus’s bony hand had just landed a hit. 

“BUT— MY BROTHER ONLY HAS ONE HP,” the other Papyrus said, sweating profusely. “I DON’T THINK THIS IS A GOOD IDEA. I-I THINK WE’RE DOING OKAY AS WE ARE, WE DON’T NEED TO—“

“YOU JUST DON’T KNOW HOW BROKEN YOUR RELATIONSHIP IS BECAUSE YOU’VE NEVER LOOKED AT IT FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE,” Papyrus said, with all the logic in the world by his side. “BESIDES, YOU DON’T NEED TO TAKE HIS HP DOWN. IT’S JUST A HIT WITH NO ILL INTENT.”

“BUT IT WILL HURT!”

“THAT’S THE POINT.”

Papyrus put the other Sans on the ground again, placing him in front of the other Papyrus. 

The brothers looked at each other, not knowing how to react.

“WELL?! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? HIT HIM!”

Sans gently tugged at Papyrus’s scarf, and his brother turned around with narrowed eyelids. “boss, um… i think they got the message. i hoped ya would just explain them why this is all wrong, not  force them to beat each othe—“

“SHUT UP, SANS! NO ONE ASKED YOUR OPINION! AND YOU, OTHER ME, JUST HIT HIM AND BE DONE WITH IT! IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO!”

The other Papyrus lifted a hand.

“YES! YES, THAT’S IT! NOW HIT HIM ON THE BACK OF HIS SKULL.”

“BUT—“

“DO IT!”

The other Sans shrunk a little, pressing his hands on the sides of his skull. He still had a terrible headache, and they weren’t helping at all.

The other Papyrus hesitated with his hand up in the air for another second, then he burst into tears and squeezed his brother in a tight hug.

“OH, MY POOR BROTHER! I CAN’T! HE’S TOO SMALL AND FRAGILE AND— I DON’T WANT TO HIT HIM. I LOVE HIM TOO MUCH TO HURT HIM.”

“aw, papy, don’t cry. i’m okay, you didn’t do anythin’ bad!” The other Sans wheezed, his brother’s hug taking the oxygen out of his ribcage. “i love ya too.”

Sans felt relieved the other Papyrus hadn’t gone through with it - he wasn’t sure the bonehead was going to survive the hit, and he still had to help him with the machine, damn it. 

However, the same couldn’t be said for Papyrus, who had the face of someone who had just been robbed of a package of candy.

“AH. I SEE HOW THIS IS,” he said, his rough voice an octave higher. “SO IT ISN’T THIS GREMLIN’S FAULT IF HE TURNED OUT AS SOFT AND STUPID AS HE DID. IT’S YOUR FAULT, OTHER ME!”

“M-MY FAULT?” The other Papyrus stuttered, pointing at himself.

“YES! YOU’VE BEEN DOING NOTHING BUT CUDDLING HIM ALL THE TIME! HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO GET STRONGER IF YOU KEEP HANDLING HIM WITH GLOVES?”

“you have gloves too, loom…” The other Sans dared to point out.

“YOU SHUT UP!”

The small skeleton lifted his hands in surrender. “okay! okay! i was just saying!”

“HE’LL GET HIMSELF KILLED! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MANY PEOPLE WANT HIM DEAD OUT THERE?!” Papyrus yelled, his eye lights flashing red.

“‘m pretty sure no monster wants me to die… almost no monster,” the other Sans whispered, trying to mend the situation. “here it’s not like at your place, loom. people are chill, they try to help each other.”

“THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO BELIEVE, SILLY HOBGOBLIN! OH, HOW I PITY YOU. NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU’RE IN THIS MISERABLE STATE. HE RUINED YOU!”

“ENOUGH!” The other Papyrus said, tightening his fists. “MY BROTHER IS FINE THE WAY HE IS! I’VE ALWAYS PROTECTED HIM AND I DON’T MIND DOING IT FOR THE REST OF OUR NATURAL LIVES IF I HAVE TO!” He got closer to the other Papyrus to look at him in the eye sockets. “FIGHT ME IF YOU DON’T AGREE!”

“sorry, what?” The other Sans squeaked.

Papyrus nodded darkly. “YES. A FIGHT IS THE ONLY WAY TO SETTLE THIS.”

“um, no? no, it’s not?” 

The other Sans squeezed himself between his brother and Papyrus, and he tried to appeal to their sanity.

“have ya both lost your minds? paps… loom… please, don’t do this. listen, i’ll… uh… i’ll sit in a corner for a while! how’s that for punishment? i’m sure i’m gonna learn my lesson that way, a hundred percent. just put your magic away and let’s all calm down, okay?”

The other Sans waited until the buzz of agitated magic subsided, then he took a deep breath in.

“that’s better,” he whispered. “i’ll go sit in a corner, then. if you want to talk to me, you can find me in the living room.”

“SANS…”

“YOU BETTER.”

The other Sans dragged himself in a corner of the living room and sat on the moquette, face to the wall.

Sans followed him with his eye lights. That was one of the weirdest situations he had ever been in, and it was saying a lot for a guy like him.

“i’ll watch over him. make sure he’s suffering a lot,” he said, following his double out of the kitchen.

Papyrus answered with a grunt, as for the other Papyrus, he looked mortified.

“LISTEN, OTHER ME. I DIDN’T MEAN TO UPSET YOU…  IT’S JUST THAT… WHY CAN’T WE JUST AGREE TO DISAGREE?”

Papyrus stared at him for a long instant, then he sighed. “I SUPPOSE WHAT HAS BEEN DONE WITH YOUR SANS CAN’T BE FIXED, NOW. YEARS OF GOOD FOR NOTHINGERY CAN’T JUST BE ERASED LIKE THAT.”

Their voices faded in the background, as Sans got closer to his idiotic counterpart, still sitting in the corner.

Chapter Text

“are ya really gonna do this?” Sans asked, slightly amused by the scene. 

“at least until they calm down,” the other Sans said, smiling a little. “next time though, just… don’t speak your mind, please.”

Sans would have wanted to tell him to fuck off because he did whatever he wanted, but he had to admit it wasn’t that bad of an advice. He had to at least try to keep his attitude in check around his brothers— no, not his brothers… his brother. Singular. Papyrus. The other one had nothing to do with him. Sans had to keep that in mind.

“that was somethin’.”

“yea. really somethin’,” the other Sans agreed, massaging his skull.

“headache?”

“a hell of a migraine.”

“ya wanna grab somethin’ to eat?” Sans asked.

The other Sans looked at the kitchen. “they’ll notice we left.”

“i hafta talk with ya in private anyway, bonehead. my bro won’t mind if we go eat somethin’, he already knows ‘bout all this. besides, ya look like you’re starvin’. fillin’ your stomach will help with the headache ’s well.”

“i don’t want them to tear the house down while we’re not here. i just need…”

The other Sans’s stare fell on the clock in the living room, and his voice died out.

“you need?” Sans encouraged him.

The other Sans got up and put on the pink, fluffy slippers he had left next to the sofa the last evening.

“bonehead! the hell you doin’?”

“i need to check on the kid. she must be headin’ out of the ruins right now, if everything’s alright.”

“what the… oh.” Sans scratched his chin. That was it, then. He had to tell the other Sans what they were planning before he went on with his daily routine. Or, at least, he had to tell him the short, director’s cut version of it, so he’d be more pliant. “listen, uh, bonehead. i wanted to talk more calmly about this, but you’re puttin’ me in a bad position. the fact is, ya don’t really hafta go after the kid anymore.”

The other Sans froze in place and he frowned. “what do ya mean?”

“i’m tellin’ ya the reason why we came here. i know me ’n my bro ain’t exactly the warm, fuzzy types, but we’re here to help ya out. with the resets, i mean. we’re goin’ to take ya out of them.”

The other Sans fell silent.

“bullshit.”

“hey, we’ve worked hard on this! don’t dismiss it like that. i finally fixed the machine, and i thought about sharing the knowledge. do ya remember ‘bout it? ‘bout our machine?”

“yea, the one that doesn’t work. how could i forget!” The other Sans bitterly snorted, shaking his head.

“if we’ll rewire it, we’ll be able to bring ya to our world, ya idiot. in our timeline the resets have stopped. our kid… well, she isn’t resetting anymore for sure, so we’re free. and we’re so kind we’re trying to extend our freedom to ungrateful fuckfaces like you.”

The other Sans looked at him for a long instant, then he sighed. “just lemme do my job and take care of frisk first, then we’ll talk, since you’re so insistent. the kid might get more curious and start to do bad stuff, if i don’t follow the script.”

“the script...?”

“you know, doing always the same things. so she won’t know i remember more than i should.”

Sans took a deep sigh and he grabbed his double’s wrist. 

“listen, bud. if ya leave this hellhole, what the kid does won’t bother you and your bro anymore. ya’ll be free. don’t ya get it?!”

The other Sans stared blankly at the moquette. All of a sudden, his facade had fallen off, and he looked a thousand years older than what he really was.

“please... don’t.”

“don’t what?”

The other Sans’s eye lights met his.

“don’t give me false hopes.”

His voice sounded menacing for the first time since Sans had met him, but, underneath that thin veil, it was incredibly frail, like a piece of glass covered in cracks.

Something clenched inside Sans’s chest.

don’t look at me like that, he thought, doing his best to keep his grin in place.

“’m not bullshitting you. i can help ya fix that machine, bonehead,” he whispered, tightening his grasp on the other Sans’s arm. Technically, that wasn’t a lie. He was just omitting the true reason why he was going to help him fix the machine. “this is your ticket out of this shitty place.”

Sans could see how badly the other Sans wanted to believe him, but also his weariness. Under his soft appearance and jokes, he had grown to be a diffident monster.

“c’mon. what do ya hafta lose?”

The other Sans chuckled faintly. “i don’t wanna know.”

He gently freed himself from Sans’s grip, and gave him a faint smile.

“’m sorry.  i hafta go check on the kid, now.”

“wait-”

Sans grabbed his sleeve just in time to get dragged in the other Sans’s shortcut. 

The familiar sensation of the world twisting around him was frightening without him being in control, but it lasted only a few seconds.

They reappeared between the pine trees in Snowdin’s forest. Cold air, sharp as a knife, filled Sans’s ribcage, making him wheeze.

The other Sans had fallen in the snow and was getting up, confused on what had just happened.

He noticed Sans, and his eye sockets widened.

“what’re ya doin’?”

“followin’ you. seems obvious to me.”

The other Sans sighed. “listen. i’d really like to accept your offer, but—”

“accept it then. what’s stoppin’ ya?”

“i can’t!” the other Sans snapped. “i just... i can’t, okay?”

He took a deep breath and crossed his legs, looking down. 

“you ‘n your bro can stay here with us if you want. I don’t mind. but please, don’t mess things up for us. it’s already bad enough as it is, and you don’t even know what could happen if the kid started to get curious again.  i think she’s finally getting bored. it won’t be long ‘til she drops this whole ordeal once and for all.”

Sans gave him a look, his grin taking a crueler hue.

“oh, really? do you really think she’ll leave ya alone?”

He got up, towering over the other Sans. 

“even if you’re right, even if your resets will stop one day, or the kid will get tired of it... tell me, are you sure you can last that long? to me it looks like you’re already worn to the bone.”

The other Sans didn’t answer, just looking in front of him.

Sans sighed deeply. His double was more stubborn than he had thought.

“listen. i just want to help ya, okay? if it worked for me, why can’t it work for you?”

He offered a hand to the other Sans. 

The small skeleton gave it a tired look, his fingers clawing the snow.

“c’mon. you hafta risk somethin’ if you wanna get out.”

“that’s a lot to ask to someone like me, ya know?”

“it’s not only you, bonehead. you can bring all your buckos away with you. maybe you’ve lost hope for yourself, but don’t you want to help them?”

The other Sans fidgeted in the snow. “yea, i do, but-”

“think about it. it’s your chance to make it up to them. i don’t know what happened in your resets, but mine have been pretty shitty, and i have done lotsa things i regret. i’m just tryin’ to make things better, now. to help someone... in my own terrible way,” he added, snorting.

That wasn’t a lie either. He was trying to make things better for his people, even though most of them were a pile of stinking bastards who didn’t really deserve it. But Sans had a big heart. 

He almost burst out laughing at that last thought.

Sans knew he was an irredeemable asshole, but, even though his brother and the other monsters treated him like shit - and he didn’t really blame them for that, he was pretty gross -, he wanted them to have a better life. After all they had been through, even though they didn’t even remember about it, they needed a break. Being stuck inside a mountain without enough food to survive for ages would have turned anyone into the worst version of themselves.

The other Sans sighed, and a faint version of his usual smile crept up on his face.

“are you really sure this could help them too?”

“yea. duh. s’what i’ve been tellin’ ya this whole time.”

“please, if you’re lying—”

“see it by yourself, if ya don’t believe me, mr.judge.”

The other Sans hesitated, then their stares met.

Sans felt his double’s eye lights digging in his, looking for a lie or a hint of malice. Unfortunately for him, Sans was a judge too. He knew how to lie to someone like him. You just had to believe your own lies. He had become a master in that field.

The other Sans’s magic was really different from his. Instead of burning hot, it was cool and soothing, even while it was scanning his conscience for lies. 

The other Sans’s presence slowly retreated, and he covered his face with his bony hands. 

“i... i don’t know. i want to believe you. please… promise me you’re not pulling my leg.”

Sans’s throat clenched. That was a low blow. 

“i don’t do promises,” he whispered. “that’s a cruel thing to ask me, ya know?”

The other Sans sighed. “yea. i know.”

“but- since you look like ya need some kinda reassurance... there. i promise. cross on my soul and all that shit.”

Sans put his left hand on his soul spot, keeping his right one in his pocket.

His fingers were crossed.

The other Sans relaxed a little and got up. He cleaned his clothes from the snow and finally took Sans’s hand. His fingers were cold due to the snow, but his touch was less wary now.

“okay, then. i hope ya know what you’re doin’, though. if that machine blows up…. i think i ended up dyin’ while workin’ on it in a few resets. it just flared and blew my bones to ash.”

Sans grinned.

“’s because you’re a bonehead. it’s a miracle ya haven’t destroyed the time-space continuum already.”

The other Sans smiled back, a little more sincerely.

“yea. at least i haven’t done that.”

He stared at Sans for an instant, still scanning him, then he turned towards his sentry station, a few feet nearby.

“’s better if i sit there though, okay? we’ll wait for the kid to come through and, if everythin’s good, we’ll give a try to this mad plan ya have.”

Sans sighed. “ya still want to jump on command for her?”

“’s safer like this. just give me this one, okay? it’ll make me feel safer, just a little bit.”

Sans pinched the zone between his eye sockets, then he nodded.

“okay. do as you want, bonehead. if it makes ya feel better.”

The other Sans nodded. “thanks, bud.”

“don’t thank me,” Sans snapped, before being able to contain himself. He could bear to lie to a trusting face, but being thanked for it was a little too much, even for him. “you don’t need to,” he added, trying to do damage control.

Luckily, the other Sans believed him and shortcutted to his station, leaving him alone.

Sans took a deep breath in and sat on a rock.

He had convinced the other Sans to listen to him.

He had succeeded.

Why did it feel so awful, then?

Chapter Text

Sans observed the exchange between the other Sans and the kid from the snowy tree branch he was sitting on.

The kid didn’t look that different from his own: she was short for an eleven year old, her dark brown hair barely long enough to caress her shoulders. Her hazel eyes wandered on the other Sans’s face without really seeing it. In the meanwhile, she was playing with a stick, drawing lines in the snow. 

All said, she looked pretty bored. Even though she was listening to the other Sans’s low mumbles and chuckles, she wasn’t really paying any attention to them. It was like watching a weird tragicomedy where the actors repeated the same old jokes and scenes until they became devoid of life.

“ya can avoid my bro if ya go up this road,” said the other Sans. “he’s not dangerous, but he’ll try to capture you. so, maybe, ya could avoid him entirely, if ya go ‘round the houses.”

The kid slightly tilted her head, a spark of interest reigniting the sparkle in her eyes. 

For a moment, Sans could have sworn there was a tinge of red in them, but he was gone as soon as he blinked. 

Judging from kid’s reaction, the other Sans had changed a little something in his script, even though he has said he wanted to stay as close to it as possible. 

His plan probably was to keep the kid busy so that they gained  some time to work on the machine without her probing in their business.

As these thoughts crossed his mind, Sans’s grin lost its edge.

he’s really believed me, huh?

If the other Sans was ready to endanger his safety more than he normally did, he was more invested in Sans’s idea than what he had shown. 

Sans took a deep breath in and lifted his hood, the soft yellow fur engulfing his skull. He rested his head on the tree bark.

Even though his soul was still enveloped by a thick wall of apathy and detachment, both due to the resets and the LV humming menacingly inside him, he was starting to feel some unsettling sensations. He didn’t like one bit the way his invisible guts twisted while looking at the other Sans doing his usual thing. 

Sans had stabbed a few monsters in the back to protect his brother and the other few ones he still gave two shits about, but they had always been terrible people who kinda deserved what was coming to them - not that Sans really cared about ethics, sometimes he had just ached for a kill, especially when his LV spiked -… but with the other Sans it was different. 

Sans was perfectly aware his pathetic version was just one bad thing away from a breakdown. That sad lump was so desperate for a way out of his hell that he had trusted someone like Sans, even though his LV should have suggested the other Sans to be careful around him. 

The bonehead had been an easy pick for Sans. He knew just where to apply pressure to make the other Sans’s defenses crumble, mainly because he knew which words he himself had been desperate to hear only a few months before.

The way the other Sans had looked at him was the worst thing of all this. That bonehead… still a naive idiot, even after everything he had been through. 

Maybe Sans should have done him a favor and finished him in his sleep, once they had fixed the machine. It would have been more merciful than looking at him in the eye while his brother and his friends were dragged into an even shittier version of their world.

A soft crunching noise made Sans lower his gaze.

His double was walking down the snowy path that lead to the forest, looking around.

“gloom? where are ya?”

Sans cringed at the nickname the other Sans had given him, and he appeared by his side with a crackle of red magic. 

“oh, there you are,”the other Sans said, giving him a relieved smile. “where were you?”

i was just analyzing your terminal case of stupidity.

Sans shrugged. 

“eh. i was around. god… i’m starvin’,” he said, directing the conversation on an easier topic. “what about going to grillby’s, bonehead? it’d be peachy to grab somethin’ ta eat that won’t make us die.”

The other Sans chuckled, even though he sounded tired, and some of his tension melted away. “heh, the “thank god there’s grillbz” constant is still true i guess. what does your bro cook?”

Sans smirked.  “he thinks lasagna is the tenth art, and he’s tried to stab me with a fork the only time i gave him some constructive criticism. when you live with him, you just gotta choose the way you want to die: it’s either by food poisoning or instantaneous dusting.”

“how did you even survive this long?”

Sans laughed darkly. “whenever i hafta eat my bro’s finest cuisine, i take a shortcut to the dump to leave my lasagna there. i’ve become so fast he doesn’t even notice when i’m gone.  a blink, and my plate’s empty.”

“that’s a good technique,” said the other Sans, with a thoughtful expression. “i should give it a try, one day. usually i just feed my bro’s spaghetti to the annoyin’ dog that comes to our house. for some reason, the freeloader appears only when we’re eatin’, like he has some kinda radar, and he adores my bro’s food. ‘m really thankful to that ball of fur. he’s saved me so many bellyaches.”

Sans snorted. At least the other option to not eating his brother’s cooking wasn’t death.

“i bet he did.”

They stayed in silence for a moment, then the other Sans offered him his hand.

Sans gave it a sardonic look.

“am i supposed ta hold it?”

“yea, if ya wanna go to grillby’s quickly and without bein’ noticed. if the kid sees two of me… i don’t wanna even think ‘bout what she’d do. maybe’s ya should wait outside the bar. even better, in the back of the bar. yea, that is— ”

“i won’t show myself to her, i got it,” Sans sighed, rolling his eyelights. 

Good god, it was true that his kid was a little creep, but Sans found it ridiculous for his double to be that scared of her. She was still a kid and, most of all, a human - that is to say, a slightly evolved, magic-less ape with an extremely fragile body.

Chapter Text

The other Sans reappeared ten minutes later, holding a grease-leaking bag in his right hand. Grillby had attached a note to it, his elegant handwriting smeared due to the chips oil:

Sans, pay your goddamn tab, or I’ll put magic suppressants in your food.

Your dear friend whose pockets are aching for your money,

Grillby

“hah! joke’s on him.” the other Sans chuckled, his eye lights glowing a little brighter. “that’d go right through me.”

Sans, whose invisible stomach had been clenching painfully for the last minutes, snatched the bag of food from his hands and dug in it. He grabbed a glistening hamburger and devoured half of it in two bites.

“whoa,” said the other Sans, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “you… uh… you really hungry, pal.”

“you’d be too, if ya found food only one day outta two,” Sans growled, giving him a hostile look. It was easy to talk for his double, that soft belly of his for sure wasn’t the result of starving himself.

The other Sans lifted his hands. “sorry. i didn’t know it was so bad. uh…” he pointed at the empty space on the rock by Sans’s side. “can i sit here?”

Sans looked at him for an instant, then he shrugged. He was too busy eating to care.

The other Sans sat by his side and tried to get his own hamburger. He was met by a deep growl on Sans’s part.

“could i get my food, please? i haven’t eaten since… i think it’s been yesterday, at lunch. i was… what was i doing yesterday afternoon? i’m sure i prepared some paninis for tori…”

Sans shivered. The bonehead couldn’t remember!

“here, have your burg and shut up!” he growled.

“wai-“

Sans cut him off by stuffing a hamburger in his open mouth. The other Sans almost choked, but managed to bite down on the bread and swallow it.

“hey! i was talkin’!”

“tch. ’s nothin’ worth listenin’ to anyway. just shuddup and eat.”

“that’s really rude.”

Sans didn’t answer and resumed eating his burger. He finished it in a few bites and went on with the fries.

“this burg’s really good, huh?” the other Sans said, smiling to him. “does grillby’s even exist in your world?”

Sans snorted.

Was the bonehead trying to make smalltalk?

Well. Fine. It was better than him trying to piece together his memories about the torture session with Boss.

“o’ course it does, bonehead. ’s one of the only decent places, but the meat we put in our burgers is… far worse. ‘m not even sure it’s meat.”

The other Sans chuckled. “ of course it’s not real meat. it’s magic,” he said, waving his fingers in a mystic fashion.

“yea, i know,” Sans said, glaring at him. He wasn’t stupid. “but our magic tastes bad in comparison. even grillby’s.”

Sans looked at the fries for a long instant. Come to think about it, those were the best fries he had ever had. He could enjoy the flavor fully now, since he wasn’t vacuuming his food anymore.

“heh. maybe it’s ‘cause you’re not packed full of LV like us. so you create less shitty things with your magic.”

Yeah, that had to be it. Even the air itself in this place wasn’t as thick and full of tension as it was in his world. Everyone, everything was so relaxed it was almost surreal, and—

Sans felt an itchy sensation on the right side of his face and he turned towards the other Sans. The bonehead was staring at him with a funny expression, as if he was— no, he wasn’t, right?

Oh, no, he was. 

“the fuck are ya lookin’ at me in that way for?”

The other Sans avoided his gaze. “’s nothin’.”

That answer somehow managed to piss Sans off even further. “i don’t need your pity.”

“i know. i’m sorry, i didn’t mean to.”

“it’s even worse, when people pity you. ’s not like it’s gonna change anything.”

“gloom, i know how that feels like.  geez, i have only 1 hp, pity is my daily bread. but it was more like…” the other Sans tried to think of something to say, but he couldn’t come up with anything. He gave Sans a quivering smile. “at least now things have meaning again for you though, right? have you told your bro about the res—“

“don’t even think about it!”

“but—“

“shut it.”

“you could tell him now, and it would stick… not like all the other times. he wouldn’t forget! and he’d understand. he’s our— i mean, your brother.”

Sans emptied the last remnants of the chips in his mouth and threw the cartons away. He cleaned his face on a sleeve of his padded jacket and muffled a burp under his hand.

“yea, well… if ya haven’t already got the news, between me ’n boss ’s not like between you and your bro.”

The other Sans fidgeted on the rock. He crumpled the hamburger’s paper before getting to the fries.

“i don’t know your bro that well, but, if he ever treated you unkindly, maybe he was thinkin’ he could help ya like that. it seems like it, seein’ the way he spoke to paps about me. your bro thinks that since i’m too soft i can’t defend myself or somethin’ like that.”

The other Sans’s stretched smile turned into a fond chuckle.

“he’s kinda sweet, in his own way.”

Sans grimaced. He would have never used the word “sweet” to describe his brother.

“you have no idea what you’re talkin’ about, skelerunt. listen, ’m just here to help ya fix that machine, not to share heartfelt discussions about my tragic backstory and current situation. so i’d appreciate it a lot if you stopped askin’ nosey questions.”

“i don’t even have a nose.”

“shut up, you know what i mean.”

The other Sans sighed, and he ate the last potato. He relaxed against the pine tree behind their backs and crossed his fingers on his stomach. 

His eyelids were drooping.

“i understand ya more than ya think, gloom,” he mumbled, muffling a yawn. “if ya need someone to talk to, you could-“

Sans got tired of his double’s sappiness and he grabbed his arm, dragging the bonehead towards the lab’s door.

“c’mon, open this thing and let’s get this shit over with.”

“but my nap!”

“there’s no time to nap.”

“‘m gonna fall asleep on the machine.”

“stop whinin’ and open this damn door!”

“geez… you sound like pap, now… if he had a really bad day and was really into cussin’.”

Sans rolled his eye lights, as he watched the other Sans get a rusty key out of his pocket and open the lab’s door. A strong smell of ketchup and computer packaging invaded his nasal cavity, making him wince. Sans acknowledged his own dirtbagness, but damn, it looked like that place hadn’t been cleaned in the last hundred years.

Lovely.

“what about some ambient perfume, bonehead? have ya ever thought of that?”

The other Sans shrugged.

“i haven’t been here in… uh…” he counted on his fingers, mumbling to himself. Then he surrendered and took a deep sigh. “it’s been a long time. lotsa resets. i can’t even remember when I started to build that machine. gaster had some blueprints lying around. i tried to use them, but-“ the other Sans’s smile became a little melancholic. “i could never wrap my mind around them. he was far brighter than me.”

They stayed in silence for a brief moment, then the other Sans flipped the light-switch. A yellowish glow invaded the room, the lights flickering.

“i should change that thing,” the other Sans whispered, looking at it. Then he shrugged. “whatever.”

He dragged his slippers on the grey tiles covered in dust and debris, and he reached a tall structure covered by a heavy sheet. He lifted it with some blue magic and it landed heavily by his side, creating a cloud of dust.

The other Sans coughed, his eye sockets watering.

“th-there it is! kff-kff! hak!… stupid dust… go take a look at it, if ya want.”

He sat on the ground, not wanting to move towards the chair - that was far too much effort - and he crossed his legs. 

Sans examined the machine from head to toe. It looked in pretty good conditions even though it hadn’t been touched in such a long time.

They only needed a few missing pieces and, most of all, to rewire it like Sans and Alphys had figured out together after Frisk had died.

Sans felt a weird twinge of nostalgia at the thought of his kid, but he didn’t let himself dwell on it. What was done, was done. There was no point in going back or feeling sentimental about it.

She had to be stopped somehow.

Sans knelt in front of the machine and opened a panel at its base, letting the damaged wires snake through his fingers.

“there’s some work to do. ’s a good thing your lazy ass is here to help.”

“i have no idea how, though. told ya: this ’s all i could do on my own.”

Sans looked at the machine. It was pretty impressive. The other Sans had gotten a little further down the right path than he had on his own, before Alphys had started to help him with the machine.

But, even though the other Sans could have used an ego boost, Sans wasn’t very good with compliments. So he just made fun of him.

“aw, ya poor thing. that must’ve hurt your brain a lot, huh? all that effort…”

The other Sans snickered. “yea. it still hurts. i’ve never gained those hours of sleep back.”

don’t worry, you’re goin’ to sleep all ya want once you’re dead, a malicious voice whispered in the back Sans’s skull.

His soul tightened for a second, then he shook his head and focused back on the machine.

“it won’t be that hard since i got the crack of this puzzle. ya just need to do what i tell ya.”

“wow. i don’t have to think. i like it.”

The other Sans muffled a yawn for the second time and checked his clock.

“oh shit.”

Sans furrowed his bony eyebrows.

“what’s wrong?”

The other Sans got up, all the sleepiness vanished in an instant.

“what’s wrong?” Sans repeated, grabbing his double’s arm before he could shortcut away.

“uh… it’s paps. he hasn’t come back home. h-he should be here, by this hour.”

The other Sans had gotten extremely pale and shaky all of a sudden. Sans stiffened. He remembered the other Sans had alluded to his kid killing monsters, but he found it so hard to believe someone like Boss— that is, Papyrus, could be hurt by a human, even less so killed by one of those beings.

“your bro’s probably goin’ around town with my bro. i left boss a list of things we need ta get for the machine. they should be at the dump, now. we didn’t have enough spare parts back home, so i figured we could find some here.”

The other Sans didn’t seem convinced at all. His breathing was becoming faster and his eye lights hazier.

“i… i uh… just need to check on the kid.”

“wha- again?!”

“i’ll make it quick, i promi-“

“who cares about the goddamn kid! why would you check on her instead of your bro, anyway?”

The other Sans hesitated, at a loss of words, for once.

“i… she’s… usually i look at her LV to know if someone’s dead. i haven’t seen an actual death happen in a long time. i couldn’t take it anymore.”

Sans’s grip on his arm slackened just a little and something inside his chest became softer.

“listen. my bro’s gonna protect him. boss is a royal guard, remember? he’s killed before. he’s not gonna let anyone lay a finger on your brother.”

not until we get to our world, that’s for sure.

The other Sans swallowed, even though his mouth was completely dry. He looked torn and the pain in his expression was impossible to put into words. 

“what about we call them, huh?” Sans offered, attempting to soothe him a little. If his double was this scared, he wasn’t going to be of much help.

The other Sans shook his head. “paps never listens to me when i tell him not to go. i tried to call him many times, during the resets, when i couldn’t catch him at home, and—“ The other Sans’s voice caught in his cervical vertebrae for a moment. “h-he always goes, one way or the other. time’s like a river, gloom.  no matter how many pebbles you throw in it, you’re not gonna change its course.”

Sans swallowed. Who the hell even was this kid? What the fuck was wrong with her?

Did she really— had she really…?

No, Frisk wasn’t like that. Frisk was one of the cruel creatures that had locked them down there to die, but she was different from them. She would have never hurt a fly.

The other Sans was slipping away though, and Sans had to think of something to make him hang onto reality. The bonehead couldn’t get caught in his own paranoia… in his own memories? It was hard to tell, now.

“listen, bonehead, i don’t know everything that happened the other times, but this time you’re gonna leave the fucking river, and the kid’s not gonna have a clue ‘bout this!” said Sans, doing his best to be patient, even though his LV was starting to twist angrily, pushing him to be harsher. He selected his brother’s number from his contact list and gave the phone to the other Sans, who accepted it with trembling hands, almost making it fall.

“talk with my bro. he’s gonna make ya feel better.”

Chapter Text

Papyrus felt something buzz inside his pocket. Loud and aggressive music filled the humid air of Waterfall.

“WOWIE, THAT’S A REALLY COOL RINGTONE,” said the other Papyrus, giving him a glistening smile. “IT’S SIMILAR TO MINE, BUT MORE… UH… METALLIC?”

“THIS MUSICAL GENRE IS INDEED CALLED METAL, OTHER ME. YOU SHOULD GIVE IT A LISTEN WHEN YOU HAVE SOME SPARE TIME. IT CAN BE QUITE LIBERATING. USUALLY I HEADBANG MY WORRIES AWAY TO THE SWEET MELODY OF DEATH METAL WHEN MY BROTHER MAKES ME TOO ANGRY.”

“OH. WHEN SANS IRRITATES ME I MAKE PASTA INSTEAD. BUT… Most of the time I’m just worried about him.”

Papyrus lifted a finger to interrupt the uncomfortable curve the conversation was taking and he answered the phone.

“SANS, I’M ON A VERY IMPORTANT MISSION RIGHT NOW AND I’D BE GLAD IF YOU STOPPED WASTING MY TIME EVEN FROM FAR AWAY. WHAT DO YOU WANT NOW? AREN’T YOU WITH THE YOUR STUPID COPY?”

A barely audible whimper of anguish came from the other side.

“sorry to bother ya, loom. ’s just… i wanted to check if everythin’ was alright,” said a small voice.

Papyrus furrowed his bony eyebrows. That wasn’t his Sans. He would have never spoken in such a soft tone. 

“I GATHER THIS ISN’T MY BROTHER. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, PATHETIC MARSHMALLOW? STEALING MY BROTHER’S THINGS BEHIND HIS BACK?”

The other Sans chuckled faintly. “no… heh… i… i just wanted to, you know… ask how paps is doin’. is he okay?” 

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IS HE OKAY?”

“is he, you know- there with you?”

“OF COURSE HE IS! WHERE ELSE WOULD HE BE?” 

Papyrus held the phone in front of his double. “TELL YOUR BROTHER TO STOP BOTHERING US. IF YOU HAD DISCIPLINED HIM ENOUGH, HE WOULDN’T BE ADAPTING SUCH AN UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR!”

The other Papyrus’s face enlightened and he took Papyrus’s phone, keeping it close to his non-existent ear.

“BROTHER! I’M SO GLAD TO HEAR FROM YOU. I’M DOING PERFECTLY FINE. WHAT ABOUT YOU? YOU SOUND A LITTLE OFF.”

Papyrus listened in silence, furrowing his bony eyebrows.

“AVOIDING THE MAIN ROADS? WHY?”

The other Sans’s response was too low to hear.

“WELL, IF THAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER, I WILL DO IT. EVEN THOUGH I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT WORRIES YOU SO MUCH. I HAVE PREPARED SOME PASTA FOR YOU IF WE DON’T GET BACK HOME IN TIME FOR DINNER, THOUGH. HAVE FUN WITH OUR OTHER BROTHER! BYE!”

The other Papyrus gave the phone back and smiled. 

“HE NEEDED SOME REASSURANCE. SANS ALWAYS WORRIES SO MUCH ABOUT EVERYONE! I WISH HE DID THAT FOR HIMSELF TOO.”

Papyrus sighed and put the phone on the side of his skull. What a bunch of nonsense. 

“ARE YOU GOING TO DISTURB US AGAIN TODAY? WE NEED TO GET THOSE MACHINE PARTS BACK. I HOPE MY USELESS BROTHER DID AT LEAST TELL YOU ABOUT THAT.”

“yeah. right,” the other Sans whispered. He sounded slightly less concerned. “i… thanks for keepin’ an eye socket on my bro, loom. i appreciate it, really. i’ll hafta get back at ya somehow. what ‘bout some hugs? you look like ya need some.”

“WHAT?!” Papyrus’s skull became as red as his scarf. “THAT’S A HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE OFFER, YOU SLIMEBALL! THAT’S PERVERTED!”

“wha- ’s jussa hug.”

“WELL IF YOU REALLY WANT TO THANK ME, YOU CAN DO THAT BY NOT HUGGING ME, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!”

“uh-“

“NOW SORRY, BUT I HAVE TO GO. GOODBYE, AND DO NOT EVER CALL AGAIN!”

The other Sans looked at the phone, slightly confused on what happened, but also humored by Papyrus’s reactions.

His worried expression was now mitigated by fondness as he gave the phone back to Sans.

“what did i tell ya? everythin’s fine.”

The other Sans smiled to him.

“yea. you’re right. thanks for snappin’ me out of it. your bro’s really cool. ‘m glad he’s watchin’ over paps too. it even sounds like they’re not arguin’ anymore. ‘m sure they gonna become great frien-“

“yea, yea. that’s really heartwarming, but we don’t have time for bein’ cheesy. we need to fix that machine before the kid resets and we hafta start everythin’ from the beginnin’.”

The other Sans sighed.

“yea. you’re right. heh… i thought i’d never say this, but let’s get to work.”

Chapter Text

The other Sans could be a good worker when he put his mind to it. Even though he was pretty rusty and hadn’t touched the machine in ages, he was able to keep up with all the information contained in the blueprints he kept in the drawer of his desk.

They were covered by scribbles in Wingdings, a residue of Gaster’s notes, and both Sanses cringed at the mere sight of that familiar handwriting.

The afternoon flew by, with the two skeletons rewiring the machine as Sans instructed.

After a few hours, the other Sans started to get tired, his eyelids drooping against his will. He yawned so many times that Sans started to feel sleepy as well.

At some point, Sans realized that his double had been cleaning rust off the same spot for the past five minutes, and he grabbed him by his a sleeve of his hoodie, giving him a shake.

“stop sleeping on your job, lazy ass! i mean- you can sleep on your job, but not on this one.”

The other Sans was almost limp in Sans’s hold, and he gently patted one of his hands. His eyelids were still half-drooped, as if he was desperately fighting to stay awake.

“yea, yea… sorry…”, he mumbled. “i know this is important, but i skipped my afternoon nap. it always makes me feel tired when i’m awake for more than six hours in a row. i just n-need…” He yawned again, stretching his jaw to its limits. “to close my eye sockets for… for a f-few minutes…”

His chin sunk in his shirt and he started to snore.

Sans stared at him in bewildered silence. He couldn’t believe his own eye lights.

“you little- hey! wake up!”

He shook the other Sans with more energy, but to no avail. The sorry lump was sleeping like a rock.

“goddamn it. you stinky, useless monster,” Sans hissed, pinching the area above his nasal cavity. 

He took a deep sigh and looked at the machine. It was almost finished. The only thing they needed were the pieces Papyrus and his vanilla version were going to bring them. 

Maybe Sans could let his double have his little nap. But only ten minutes.

The other Sans had made nothing but errors for the last half an hour anyway. If the machine exploded on their faces it was going to be a problem.

Sans sat at his double’s side and he lit up a cigarette with an old lighter he once found in the dump. He inhaled the smoke, and it slowly came out of his ribcage and nasal cavity, dispersing in soft curves.

The other Sans had curled up against the machine, his arms crossed in a protective way over his chest. The soft bulge of his belly emerged from under his ribcage, making him look as if he had just swallowed a watermelon. It was weird on a skeleton, but, whatever kept them together, it could grow into a beer- um, ketchup belly. Sans on the other hand had always been thin, now more than ever, after his Underground’s reserves had dried, but he could perfectly imagine himself turning into something like that, if he had all the food he wanted at hand all the time.

The other Sans had lived the easy life.

However, that thought didn’t make Sans feel any better about what he was going to do once the last piece of the machine fell in place.

Sans pressed the cigarette on the ground, leaving a black mark on it, and he took a deep sigh, resting his skull on the machine. 

He checked the watch Alphys had given them. That bloody thing was going to give him a rash. Was it even possible for skeletons to get those? Well, he was going to get a skeleton rash, then.

Sans covered his arm with his padded jacket and grabbed the other Sans’s shoulder, a low growl coming from the back of his throat. He had been patient enough.

“c’mon, wake up, bonehead. ya had your nap.”

“hmn…”

The other Sans woke up enough to give him his back and then he went limp again, snoring even louder.

i swear, this fuckin’ guy—

“wake up!”

He kicked his double in the ribs, and the other Sans jolted awake, looking around in search of his assaulter, his magic humming menacingly. Then he realized there was no danger - for now - and he pressed a hand on his chest.

“couldn’t ya just wake me up normally? you’re gonna be the death of me if ya keep this goin’,” he wheezed, waiting for his soul to stop beating like it wanted to get out of his ribcage.

Sans almost laughed at that observation. 

oh, you have no idea.

“sorry, bonehead. i know that workin’ is a completely foreign concept to you, but sooner or later everyone’s gotta grow up.”

The other Sans rubbed his dark-ringed eye sockets and yawned again. He looked like barely kept together dust. 

“honestly i hoped to delay reaching the age of reason a little longer.” 

He got up and popped his back with a grimace.

“feels like i’m a thousand years old. maybe i have some cobwebs in my spine,” he muttered to himself. “must be all those times i haven’t bought any spider treats. those guys have the tendency to hold grudges.”

He knelt on the blueprints and looked at them, trying his best to not use them as a blanket and fall asleep again.

“so, uh- what’s missin’, here?”

“we still need to fix the connection of the machine to the magical system of snowdin.”

The other Sans frowned, his eye lights getting dimmer as he thought about that proposal. “if we take energy from the town, there’ll be a a blackout. we need lotsa power to activate this thing. i really hope the kid’s already in waterfall and that she won’t notice this.” He took a peek at his watch. “at this time, she’s probably there. but what if she doesn’t see me at my sentry post?”

His breath caught in his ribcage and he held his arms, as if to anchor himself to reality. His fingers dug deep in his hoodie, almost scratching the bone.

“what is she goin’ to do?”, he whispered.

Sans snapped him out of it with a nudge to his ribs. “’s not gonna matter, remember?”

“i… uh…”

The other Sans’s eye lights darted left and right, and Sans could almost hear his mind crack under the pressure.

He was a wreck, under his chilled-out facade.

Sans wondered what the hell had happened in his resets, if Frisk had really done all the things his double had pointed at, more or less subtly. But then he realized that he didn’t really want to know. He didn’t need another reason to sympathize with someone he was going to stab in the back anyway.

“listen,” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. The other Sans flinched at the touch. He looked scared out of his mind, his eye lights on the verge of being drowned by the black sea below.  But he also seemed desperate for any rope that could be thrown at him, for anything to hang onto. “it’s too late to back down now. if the kid doesn’t see you in waterfall, she’ll lose time lookin’ for you and to know what’s really happenin’. that’s all in our favor, right? don’t freak out.”

The other Sans swallowed and the trembling in his hands got less severe, even though his eye lights were still shrunk due to terror - Sans did his best to ignore the spark of desperate madness in them.

“okay… o-okay, you’re right…” the other Sans took a deep breath in, trying to calm down. “you’re always right. l-let’s get this over with.”

Sans nodded and let him go with caution, fearing that he was going to keel over without his help. The other Sans shook his head, trying to focus on what they were doing, but his hands trembled so much that all he could do was give Sans the tools he required.

Minutes passed, and, before they knew it, the lanterns outside started to dim. 

’s almost night, Sans thought, mildly unsettled.

He knew his brother wasn’t one to be worried about, but Papyrus should have been there at that point.

The other Sans surely wasn’t happy his brother wasn’t at home: he had started to mumble to himself, checking the wires inside the machine more times than Sans could count, walking back and forth on the same spot.

It had started snowing, when they finally heard two already loud voices getting progressively louder.

The other Sans’s face lit up with a big smile, and he ran towards the door, tripping over his own feet.

He opened the door and a blow of wind sprayed a cascade of snowflakes on the floor.

“paps!” 

The other Sans hugged his brother’s waste, even though his head barely reached the other Papyrus’s hips. The small skeleton was trembling, but it wasn’t out of fear this time.

“ERM- SANS?” The other Papyrus didn’t look displeased by his show of affection, but he shot a quick glance at his double, fearing to elicit a bad reaction. “IS EVERYTHING OKAY?”

“y-yes. sorry.” The other Sans gave him a quivering smile and wiped his eye sockets on his sleeve, trying to go unnoticed. “i’m- s’just- well… i was worried ‘bout you. you weren’t coming back, and i thought… i was afraid th-that—”

The other Papyrus’s features softened. “YOU ALWAYS WORRY TOO MUCH, BROTHER. I AM OKAY, SEE? IN ALL MY COOLNESS.”

The other Sans laughed, his voice cracking in an almost imperceptible way.

“yea, all the coolness unscathed.”

He rubbed his puffy eye sockets and his stare met Papyrus’s. 

“thanks for looking out for my bro,” the other Sans said, smiling earnestly to him. “it means a lot.”

Papyrus looked to the side, snorting in a demeaning manner.

“IT’S BEEN ALL BUT DIFFICULT. YOUR BROTHER, AS IT IS EXPECTED OF MY COPY, IS QUITE A GOOD GUARDSMEN. HE HAS HELPED ME CARRY THIS MACHINERY FOR THE WHOLE JOURNEY WITHOUT BREAKING A SWEAT.”

He gave a little kick to the pile of metal he and his double had collected. He rummaged in his scarf and extracted a crumpled piece of paper, covered in his brother’s small and messy handwriting.

“HERE, LAZY SLOB. I THINK WE FOUND EVERYTHING. YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL IT WASN’T YOU TWO THE ONES WHO HAD TO DELVE INTO THE TRASH. EVEN THOUGH THAT IS YOUR NATURAL ELEMENT.”

“‘m very grateful,” the other Sans said, smiling again.

A red glow crept up on Papyrus’s skull, and he cleared his throat. 

“YES, OBVIOUSLY YOU ARE. THAT’S THE BARE MINIMUM. ANYWAYS, BROTHER, THE LIST.”

Sans got up and went through it. Yes. Everything seemed in place.

is this actually going to plan?

Sans was so used to things being screwed over by something or someone that he almost didn’t believe how smoothly the plan was proceeding. Ironically, it was the only time that he would have appreciated things taking a different turn. Not due to a rebellion on his part of course - he would have never backed down, he wasn’t suicidal to that point -, but if something out of his control were to made things go wrong and force them to go home and leave those two schmucks alone, he wouldn’t have complained too much.

“C-CAN WE CLOSE THAT DOOR NOW?” the other Papyrus cried, his bones rattling. “NOT THAT THE COLD FAZES ME AT ALL, B-BUT IT’S GETTING PRETTY CHILLY IN HERE.”

The other Sans nodded and closed the door for him. The lab was still really cold, but at least snow wasn’t getting in anymore.

“if you’ll help us put these in place, we’ll finish the machine in no time,” Sans said, putting the crumpled paper in his pocket. 

“OF COURSE! JUST TELL US WHAT TO DO!” the other Papyrus exclaimed, jumping in place. “SANS NEVER LETS ME DO THE SCIENCE. I REALLY LIKE IT THOUGH! WHAT IS MY JOB?”

Sans gave him an awkward stare, scratching the back of his skull. “uh… why don’t you… um… well, you could pass me that old engine over there. there’s still some stuff we can reuse in it.”

The other Papyrus nodded enthusiastically and did as requested. 

He put his heart even in the smallest, most insignificant tasks.

Sans found himself smiling a little, and he was quick to slap that expression off his face. He had to focus! He couldn’t just look at the other Papyrus being happy to be useful.

“okay,” he whispered. He pointed a clawed index towards the other Sans. “you! help me.”

The other Sans nodded and dragged himself towards him. He gave a warm look to his brother, his eye lights shining with affection and admiration.

“he’s so cool,” he whispered.

“and boss…” Sans gave a dubious look to Papyrus. His brother was a little worn out after carrying around all that junk,  but it was nothing a small nap couldn’t fix. Not that Papyrus ever slept. “why don’t you sit down for a moment?”

Papyrus lifted an eyebrow.

“SIT… DOWN?” He repeated, as if those words weren’t included in his vocabulary.

“yea, loom! i know you’re strong and mighty, but ’s been a very long day even for ya,” the other Sans intervened, moving closer to him. “why don’t ya rest a little, why me ’n your bro give the finishin’ touches to that thing?”

Papyrus lowered his gaze to meet the other Sans’s eye lights, then he smugly patted his skull, as if the small skeleton was a dog that had performed an amusing trick.

“POOR, FEEBLE CREATURE! WORRYING ABOUT THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE PAPYRUS! HAH! AS IF A LITTLE RUN IN THE DUMP COULD FAZE ME AT ALL!”

He attentively examined the the other Sans and his grin drooped a little.

“YOU, ON THE OTHER HAND, LOOK LIKE YOU HAVE BEEN THROUGH A BONE GRINDER. SANS, HAVE YOU BULLIED THIS PATHETIC BEING WHILE I WAS GONE? I AM ALL FOR MURDER AND MAYHEM, BUT HARMING THIS SORRY CREATURE WOULD BE LIKE KICKING A SICK PUPPY.”

He grabbed the other Sans and almost shoved him on Sans’s face to make him understand better.

“gah! Get that idiot offa me!” the short skeleton protested, finding himself with the other Sans in his arms.

“heya,” his double said, giving him an amused smile, his eye lights darting between Sans and his brother. “looks like your bro’s gone soft… havin’ mercy on a pitiful bein’ as i am, huh?”

Sans let him fall without a second thought.

“ow! my coccyx isn’t indestructible, ya know?”

Sans ignored him.

“i haven’t touched him with a finger! and why would ya care so much anyway? you’re always all for self importance and not much else.”

Papyrus seemed at a loss for words, for a second. Then his scowl went back into place.

He grabbed the other Sans and tucked him under his arm, holding him like a rolled carpet.

“SELF-IMPORTANCE!” He spat. “AFTER ALL THE TIMES I SAVED YOUR BONY BOTTOM, THIS IS HOW YOU SPEAK TO ME?” 

Sans chuckled, a slightly unhinged spark in his eye lights. He could feel his LV starting to twist and turn like a caged animal.

“oh, please. you only did it ‘cause it would look bad if your brother died. you’re only afraid people’re gonna think you’re not strong enough to protect your shit. i could be dusted tomorrow, for all ya care. i bet it would be a relief to not have me draggin’ ya down all the time, too.”

“hey, guys, please… don’t fight.”

“shut up ya smiley idiot! no one asked for your opinion!”

“MY BROTHER IS NOT AN IDIOT,” the other Papyrus intervened, his unsettling honesty leaving them all confused long enough for their anger to lose its edge. “AND HE’S RIGHT. YOU SHOULDN’T FIGHT LIKE THIS. I BET THERE IS SOME REASON FOR MY OTHER SELF TO HAVE BEHAVED IN A CERTAIN WAY, OTHER BROTHER. RIGHT, OTHER ME?”

Papyrus took a sigh and absentmindedly patted the other Sans’s skull while thinking about a reply.

“MAYBE I HAVE BEEN A LITTLE TOO HARSH WITH YOU  IN THE LAST MONTHS, BROTHER.”

“it’s been years!” Sans growled.

“YEARS, MONTHS…! IT’S NOT IMPORTANT! ANYWAY. THE REASON WHY I HAVE ALWAYS PUSHED YOU TO DO STUFF IS BECAUSE I… UM… WELL, YOU SEE…”

Since Papyrus seemed unable to express what he was feeling, the other Sans intervened.

“he’s still your bro, bud. whatever he did, he just wanted to help ya.” He sighed, scratching his skull. “but, uh, yanno that our brothers sometimes are a little exuberant. what he probably wants to say is that he loves you. he just wanted to protect you.” The other Sans looked at Papyrus, whose terrifying scowl had gotten ten times darker. “or am i wrong?”

“TCH. NO. YOU’RE ‘CORRECT’, UNDER CERTAIN ASPECTS. I HAD NO IDEA SANS THOUGHT THESE THINGS OF ME. WHY HAVE YOU NEVER TOLD ME?”

Sans, who was staring at them with big, confused eye lights, lowered his gaze for a second, searching for words.

“i thought… i’d just…” he cleared his metaphorical throat, but no words seemed to get through.

The other Papyrus barged in and grabbed Sans as if he was a puppy, holding him so tight his skull started to turn to a deep shade of breathless red.

“IF THERE’S SOMETHING I KNOW ABOUT MY BROTHER IS THAT HE ALWAYS HIDES STUFF FROM ME BECAUSE HE THINKS THIS HELPS ME. FOR SOME TWISTED REASON, HE’S CONVINCED HE’S A BURDEN FOR ME, AND I HAVE NO IDEA  FROM WHERE HE GETS THESE ASININE IDEAS. OTHER BROTHER, ARE YOU LIKE THIS TOO?”

“hhhh…”

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU, SORRY. COULD YOU PLEASE REPEAT?”

The other Sans chuckled. “paps, you really have to check the strength of your hugs.”

“WHA- OH. SORRY, OTHER BROTHER!”

The other Papyrus put Sans on the ground. He coughed, massaging his cervical vertebrae.

“for being a skinny beanpole, he packs a good hold,” he retched, red tears gathering in his eye sockets. 

He stiffened when Papyrus got closer to him, towering over his small figure. His threatening aura was somehow diminished by the fact he was still holding the other Sans under his arm, but he  still was pretty scary.

“I HAD NO IDEA YOU, OF ALL PEOPLE, WERE TRYING TO PROTECT ME, BROTHER. BUT WHAT IS IT THAT YOU HAVE DONE TO HELP, EXACTLY?“

“see?!” Sans yelled, pointing at him. “he never gives me credit for anything! would it be so difficult to say ‘thank you sans’, or- i don’t know, to not treat me like garbage all the time? it would help making me feel a little less like i belong in the dump, yanno?”

The other Sans took a deep sigh and smiled. “severe emotional constipation isn’t somethin’ you can heal from in just five minutes, buddy. uh- loom?”

“YES?” 

“your bro might be kind of an asshole, but—“

“i can’t believe this! you too, now! you’re all workin’ against me!”

“but he loves you too, and we’re more the kinda guys who help in the background, not makin’ a show out of it. right, gloom?”

Sans looked at him for a moment, then he sighed. “whatever. this is gettin’ really embarrassin’. couldn’t we just go back to work on the machine? please?”

The other Papyrus pouted. “BUT YOU HAVEN’T EVEN HUGGED YET!”

A disgusted noise came from both Papyrus and Sans.

“THAT’S A LEWD SUGGESTION, OTHER ME.”

Sans shivered. “don’t ever say that again.”

“loom, if you’re not ready for your bro, ya can always practice with me.” 

The other Sans hugged his arm, and Papyrus desperately waved it in the air. 

“GET OFF MY HUMERUS, DISGUSTING DIRTPILE! THIS IS A VIOLATION OF PERSONAL SPACE!” He looked at Sans for help. He had never seen Papyrus so scared before. It was almost amusing.

Before Sans could intervene though, the other Papyrus collected the other Sans and held him close.

“I WILL SACRIFICE MYSELF AND ATTRACT THE HUGGING ENERGY OF MY BROTHER ON MY PERSONA, SO YOU’LL BE SAFE FROM HIM FOR A WHILE, OTHER ME.” 

“yea, lemme focus my energy,” the other Sans said, snuggling in his brother’s arms. He yawned. “oh look… ‘m already out of it…  looks like your evil plan has worked…”

His head lowered and he started snoring. 

“AW, POOR SANS. WORKING REALLY WEARS HIM OUT,” said the other Papyrus, between irony and worry. 

Sans covered his face with a hand. 

Was everything going to be like this every time they were all in the same room?

He needed the other Sans's help if he wanted to get it over with the machine quickly, they didn’t have time for another nap!

Chapter Text

“wake the bonehead up! he’ll have all the time to rest later, trust me,” Sans grunted, giving a crooked look to the other Sans, who was snoring peacefully in his brother’s arms.

“USUALLY I’M ALL FOR MAKING SURE SANS DOESN’T SLEEP HIS LIFE AWAY, BUT HIS SOUL IS REALLY FRAGILE AND HE HAS TO REST FROM TIME TO TIME.” The other Papyrus’s voice lowered so much that Sans and Papyrus had to get close to hear him. “You see, he has a nasty scar on his soul and, if he strains himself too much, it can reopen. So, please, be careful with him. A little nap from time to time should be enough to make Sans feel better, but it’s dangerous to push him too hard.”

Sans blinked and looked at his double, his clawed fingers fidgeting in the pockets of his padded jacket.

Sans had a few hairline cracks himself, but he was stronger than his double, especially in regards to his stamina. 

Having a cracked soul was a more common experience in their world, but in this one…? 

What happened to the guy to push him over the brink? Did someone hug him too tightly? Did he lose a snowball game? Those seemed like the worst things that could happen in that sappy place. And getting your soul cracked required far more than just one bad experience anyway.

“i’ll try to be more gentle, then” Sans growled, gritting his teeth. The word felt wrong, like it had gotten stuck in his mouth. “but i really need his help. just for a little longer.” He took a deep breath and, feeling like he was about to retch, he forced himself to utter the word: “please.”

The other Papyrus seemed surprised by his politeness. He gave a worried look to his brother, then he sighed and nodded. He put a hand on the other Sans’s ribcage and massaged it until the the small skeleton opened his eye sockets.

“paps,” he whispered, with a sleepy smile. “somethin’s wrong?”

“No, no, everything is okay. I’m sorry to wake you up, brother, but you have to help the other you. I know you’re tired, but he can’t make it on his own,” the other Papyrus said, smiling back to him in an apologetic way. “I will let you rest all you want, later. You can even eat Grillby’s if you can’t avoid it!”

“heh… oh, so merciful.”

The other Sans recollected his thoughts, scratching his cheekbone, then he nodded. 

“yea, sure. of course.”

The other Papyrus put him down, and the other Sans dragged himself towards his double.

“let’s add these last pieces, then we can eat,” Sans said, passing an arm around his shoulders to pilot him towards the machine. “’s not like we haven’t eaten Grillby’s before, huh? we’d never be so sneaky.”

The other Sans chuckled, even though it required him a second more than usual.

“never,” He whispered, rubbing his eye sockets to stay awake.

Sans grinned and gave him a protecting mask, so they could use some magic to fuse a few pieces of equipment to the machine.

They worked in silence, while the Papyruses were chattering in the background.

At some point the other Papyrus exited the room and went to pack their stuff. 

Sans had suggested his brother to tell the other Papyrus they were going on vacation, and thank god he had bought it. He looked really happy to visit their place.

If he only knew…

“gimme a wrench, bonehead,” Sans said, extending a hand towards him.

He didn’t receive anything.

“bonehead?”

Sans lifted his gaze and he noticed that the other Sans was massaging his chest in silence, his eye lights dim. He looked like he was in a haze, staring right in front of himself without really seeing what he was doing.

“are you awake?” 

Sans grabbed him by the arm, then he remembered he had told the other Papyrus he would try to be more gentle, so he eased his grip.

“hey, wake up, bonehead.”

The fog in the other Sans’s gaze slowly cleared and he blinked, confused on what had just happened.

“what did you say?” he whispered, his eye lights back in place. He noticed Sans’s expression and his smile faltered. “are you okay?”

“yea. yea, ‘m okay.” 

Sans let his double go and went back to work, leaving the other Sans to look at him in silence, wondering why he had gotten so cold all of a sudden.

They worked in silence for a while. The other Sans had almost forgotten about their weird exchange, when Sans’s rough voice muttered something.

“sorry, what? i didn’t hear you.”

“can i ask you a question?” Sans repeated, a little irritated.

“sure, gloom. what is it?”

Sans sighed. That stupid nickname. He reminded himself he needed to be kind, just a little longer.

“your bro told us somethin’ about you havin’ some kinda sickness. is that true?”

“uh- me? a sickness?” the other Sans chuckled, pointing at himself with an incredulous expression. “paps always makes things bigger than what they are. ’s nice that ya worry ‘bout me gloom, but don’t sweat it. ‘m fine.”

Sans narrowed his eyelids. That was the confirmation he was looking for. 

He took a deep sigh. It wasn’t his business if the other Sans  and his wimpy-ass cracked soul crumbled to pieces, but there was something stirring in his soul that he thought had died a long time ago.

“listen, bonehead, the machine is almost done. you can rest, if ya want.”

The other Sans’s eye sockets widened in surprise, then he sighed.

“my bro told ya ‘bout the crack on my soul, i see,” he said, a little frustrated. “listen, i know my limits, okay? if i say i can do it, i can do it. it’s just some science-y stuff. i’ll have time to rest later, as ya said.”

Sans hesitated. He wanted to tell him that he wasn’t going to have a minute to rest if he held dear his life, but, at the last moment, he nodded.

“okay, then. if you say ya can do it…”

The other Sans smiled, looking both relieved and grateful.

“thanks,” he said. “i don’t wanna be treated like ‘m made of glass, yanno? it’s already sad enough to have people lookin’ at me like i’m terminally ill ‘cause i have one hp, i don’t wanna be more of a problem. science is the only thing i’ve ever been good at - besides my bonesome jokes -, and if there’s something i can do, it’s this. you can actually live with a scar on your soul for the rest of your natural life, ya know? it’s not that big of a deal, in the end.” 

The way he talked about cracked souls was bone-chilling even for Sans. Cracking a monster’s soul was the worst torture method he knew about, and the other Sans was so casual about it. Not that Sans expected anything else from him:  the tougher the subject, the more dismissive the other Sans was, especially if his health was involved.

Kinda reminded Sans of someone he often saw in the mirror.

“don’t you have a cracked soul too?” the other Sans asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

“i have a few hairline cracks, but nothing that serious, they’re too small to even matter. it’s normal stuff, where we live.”

“that’s terrible.”

said the guy with a cracked soul.

“don’t worry ‘bout it.”

“so, our life stories are more different than what i thought,” the other Sans said, scratching his chin. His expression saddened, and his eyelights dimmed. “so… i figure you haven’t visited gaster’s lab, huh?”

Sans understood what he meant and grimaced.

“i wish i hadn’t. but there wasn’t much of a choice for us: me ’n my bro needed somethin’ to eat, so i offered to be a test subject in the asshole’s lab. i thought it payed pretty well, but then… that fuckhead wouldn’t even allow us to go outside anymore. we basically were his prisoners.”

“wait wait wait-“ The other Sans put a hand on his arm. “you offered yourself as… as some kind of science experiment?”

“well, yea. as i said, it paid well. but then that piece of shit took it too far. he started to do the same stuff he did to me to my brother. so i made sure he was going to meet a bitter end. he was too smug to consider that i could have the guts to bite back.” 

Sans smiled at the thought of the old doctor’s face. He had looked so surprised when Sans had used the magic the bastard himself had given them to send him to, hopefully, a very bad place. A fitting and ironic end to his brilliant career: being forgotten by everyone, after working so much to end up in monster history books. Went out like a wet firework in the last night of gyftmas: pathetic, silent and with no one to witness it besides Sans.

Ah, the memory still made him feel all cozy inside.

“oh. so, you weren’t his friend?” The other Sans whispered.

Sans made a disgusted grimace, his golden tooth shining in the lights of the machine. “god, no! with that piece of shit? never. he was a psycho! he used starving kids for his experiments. if i could, i’d be glad to kill him again. he deserved that and much worse.” The other Sans lowered his gaze, and Sans frowned. “i gather you had another kind of relationship with him.”

The other Sans avoided his stare. “i wish i could just hate him, you know? i’ve worked for him for many years, as his assistant, and everything was fine. then, one day, he went nuts. he said he wanted to help me and paps by giving us magic, since we were too ‘weak’ to defend ourselves. a part of me does hate him for what he did to me and my brother, but… you see…” The other Sans resumed massaging his chest to soothe an old ache. “…i never wanted to kill him. i didn’t mean to. he… he was still my friend. i know it’s twisted as fuck, but, even now, sometimes i miss him. i miss the science days, and prankin’ him, and him tellin’ me about his theories. i think it was the happiest time of my life.”

Sans hummed. “yea. it sounds complicated.”

The other Sans gave a broken chuckle.

“sorry. you must think i’m crazy.”

“nah. the only insane thing is that you aren’t weirded out by sitting next to someone who just told you they murdered in cold blood and would do it again any time.”

“well- i don’t have any LV just because of resets and the fact that gaster somehow got erased from our world, you know?”

Sans snorted. “i have resets too, and seven LV right at the start. so… it’s my ‘normal’ LV. and it’s really curious you aren’t freakin’ out just by stayin’ close to me. you can feel it, right? LV’s not pleasant to be around.”

“it’s not the only thing there is inside you, though. you’re more than the things you did in the past. i don’t think you’re just some kinda cold-blooded murderer.”

Sans stopped for a second, then he sighed. That bonehead really was a naive idiot. Not even the red alarm sign of his LV was enough to make him realize how untrustworthy Sans really was.

“if you say so, bud” he whispered, before going back to work.

Chapter Text

When the last piece of the machine fell into place, the other Sans had been drooling on Sans’s shoulder for quite a while. At some point, the small skeleton had gotten that glassy expression again and he had slowly gone limp like a deflated balloon, the last remnants of his energy gone. His left hand was  now resting on his stomach, the other one still holding the screw he had been trying to fit in a metallic panel.

Sans had tried to push him away, but then he had realized that it was better if the other Sans was asleep. He wasn’t going to like the next phase of the plan anyway, and everyone was going to be happier if he didn’t interfere.

Even though anxiety was starting to get through Sans’s usual apathy, it was greatly dimmed by the sleepy waves coming from the other Sans’s soul. The small skeleton was resting pretty close and, while he was asleep, he wasn’t able to keep up the wall that usually divided him from other monsters.

Sans yawned and rubbed his eye sockets, trying to stay awake. It was really difficult to focus with the other Sans’s magic suggesting him that napping was the best course of action.

“HOW IS IT PROCEEDING, BROTHER?”

Sans’s gaze shot up and he met his brother’s eye lights.

“it’s finished, pretty much,” he whispered, muffling another yawn. “man, thinkin’ is hard.” 

He tried to get up, but the other Sans mumbled, sliding off his shoulder. Papyrus caught him in time and picked him up. He held him at a distance for a few seconds, then he held him closer. The other Sans rested his skull on his arm and instinctively slid into a familiar position, his breath getting deeper and slower. 

Sans got up and he wobbled for a moment. One of Papyrus’s firm hands steadied him.

“YOU HAVE DONE A GOOD JOB, BROTHER.”

Sans needed some time to understand what he had just heard. He gave his brother a look that was a mixture of incredulity and suspicion.

“DON’T MAKE THAT STUPID FACE! YOU KNOW I ALWAYS APPRECIATE A WORK THAT IS WELL DONE. I WOULD GIVE YOU PRAISE MORE OFTEN, IF YOU ACTUALLY TRIED TO DO SOMETHING EVERYDAY. I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT BUILDING A MACHINE, BUT, YOU KNOW, AT LEAST GETTING OUT OF BED ON YOUR OWN WOULD BE A GOOD START.”

Sans snorted. Of course Papyrus had to take a genuine compliment back. But a small part of him felt warmth surging in his chest. It was kinda nice.

Papyrus cleared his throat.

“SO…” he looked at the other Sans and, even though the small skeleton was sleeping too deeply to hear them, he lowered his voice. “… what are we going to do about him and the other me?”

Sans took a deep breath in. “i don’t know.”

That was the most honest answer he had given his brother in years.

“Well. We can always think about this later. We should proceed with Asgore’s plan first, we have a schedule to follow.”

Papyrus had never sounded so unconvinced about his royal duty in his whole life, and that made Sans furrow his bony eyebrows.

“boss…”

“Yes?”

“are you really convinced to proceed with this plan? you know… if you really want, we could, like, not do this. we could just stay here.”

Papyrus stiffened and, for a moment, just for a brief moment, he looked torn. 

Then, ashamed of that small weakness, he puffed his chest and gave Sans a sharp look.

“ARE YOU QUESTIONING MY LOYALTY TO THE CROWN, BROTHER?”

“wh- oh, no. absolutely not, boss, i was just saying—“

“YES, YOU ALWAYS ‘JUST SAY’. BUT YOU BETTER NOT ‘JUST SAY’ THESE THINGS ONCE WE’RE BACK HOME, OR I’LL BE FORCED TO PUT YOU IN JAIL. AND THAT WOULD BE A REALLY BAD THING FOR MY REPUTATION!”

Sans’s soul clenched a little. 

What was he expecting. That was all Boss had always cared about. It wasn’t like he was going to change in one day.

The anger in Papyrus’s expression subsided a little, as he looked at the other Sans resting in his arms. The small skeleton seemed at peace, as if nothing in the world could bother him in the state he was in. 

All of a sudden Papyrus’s face scrunched up, transforming into a disgusted scowl.

“WE’RE JUST DOING OUR DUTY, AND WE’RE GOING TO PERSEVERE UNTIL THE END OF THIS TASK. WHATEVER HAPPENS, IT’S NOT ON US. UNDERSTOOD, BROTHER?”

A heavy silence fell between them. 

It looked like Papyrus was trying to convince himself, more than his brother.

Sans, whose stare was fixated on the ground, rigidly nodded. 

What else could they do? 

His brother was right. It was either them or their copies. Asgore wasn’t going to be forgiving, if they came back with empty hands. And, if Sans knew the king just a little, he was going to go after them if they stayed there anyway. He never lost sight of his possessions. There was no plan B.

In that very moment the door of the garage burst open and the other Papyrus made his entrance, holding a big orange bag with a flower pattern in his right hand and a small blue sack in the other one. 

“I AM READY!” He announced, with a big smile. He pointed behind his shoulders. “AND LOOK, I BROUGHT SOME FRIENDS WITH ME!”

“some… friends?”

Sans looked behind him and his throat tightened, when he recognized Undyne’s familiar shape. She was different from the one at home, with long and shiny hair arranged in a ponytail instead of having them shaved, and she kept an eyepatch on her left eye socket instead of letting everyone see her milky, blind eye, but she still was pretty intimidating. She was wearing leather and jeans, and she looked like she wasn’t very happy of being there.

“Oh, no,” she groaned, when she noticed Sans. “Not another one of him!”

“well- nice to meet ya too, dickhead,” Sans spat, lifting his bony eyebrows. 

“LANGUAGE, OTHER BROTHER!”

“she’s the one who started it!”

“YES, BUT DIDN’T THEY TEACH YOU IN MONSTER KINDERGARTEN THAT JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING TO YOU, YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE PETTY REVENGE EVERY TIME?”

Sans frowned. No one had ever told him such stupid stuff.

“ANYWAYS,” the other Papyrus continued, after giving him a rewarding pat on his skull for not making anymore snarky remarks. “I’VE BROUGHT ALL THE SNOWDIN CITIZENS I COULD FIND WITH ME! THEY’RE ALL REALLY INTERESTED IN OUR BROTHERS FROM THE OTHER WORLD! AND THEY WOULD ALSO REALLY LIKE TO SEE A DIFFERENT PLACE. THE CAVE GETS PRETTY BORING AFTER A WHILE, THEY SAY. I DON’T GET THEM, I THINK IT’S REALLY COOL. SO… CAN THEY COME TOO?”

There was a group of curious monsters peeking behind the other Papyrus, getting curiouser by the second.

“What’s that thing?” They whispered, pointing at the machine.

“I wanna take a picture with it!”

“Does it fly?”

“shoo, shoo!” Sans growled, trying to disperse them. “we still have to turn it on. we can’t work with you staring at us!”

“Tch!”

“Rude!”

“I’m the mayor, and this is how I get treated?”

The monsters mumbled for a while, but they left enough space for Sans to breathe and give instructions to the others.

He looked at the other Sans, still sleeping deeply in Papyrus’s arms. He looked blissed out, and he had a faint smile on his face. 

he better do some nice thoughts, before he gets his skull smashed on a rock or something equally pleasin’.

The other Sans’s way of putting everyone at ease would’ve been really useful at the moment, though.

“the machine is ready to be started, folks. you just need to get on, one by one.”

“I WANT TO GO FIRST!” Papyrus exclaimed.

He was already half through with it, when Undyne’s hand gripped his shoulder.

“Let me come with you,” she said. “I don’t trust all this scientific mumbo-jumbo. And these guys? Are they trustworthy? They look as if you and your brother had passed the last twenty years listening to edgy music and eating nails.”

oh, look, someone who has a brain, here.

That was the last thing Sans needed now, though.

Sans gave a look to his brother, and Papyrus nodded. The tall skeleton opened the door of the machine, still holding the other Sans, and he slipped inside. The other Papyrus broke free from Undyne’s hold and climbed inside the machine: he just couldn’t let his brother go alone.

Undyne, on the other hand, gave Sans an angry look, before reaching the machine.

“Move that bony ass of yours,” she whispered to Papyrus, who had gotten back in possession of his brother’s body. “If you’re going, I’m going.”

“THANK YOU UNDYNE, YOU’RE A VERY DEAR FRIEND!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” she grunted. “What about the bag of bones? How can he sleep through this?!”

“that’s what i wonder too,” Sans said, lifting a bony eyebrow. “not even i could.”

“HERE, YOU CAN HAVE THIS PITIFUL BEING BACK. I DON’T WANT TO HOLD HIM CLOSE FOR ONE SECOND MORE THAN NECESSARY. HE’S DIRTYING MY UNIFORM.”

Papyrus handed the other Sans to the other Papyrus in the same way he would have handed a leaking bag of waste, and he sat back inside the machine, crossing his legs and arms tightly.

The other Sans mumbled in his sleep and his eyelids fluttered, but he went limp again, when his brother cradled him in his arms. 

“IT’S NOT HIS FAULT HE’S SLEEPING, THIS TIME,” the other Papyrus said, holding a hand on his brother’s ribcage, right over the spot where his soul rested. “HE HAS WORKED VERY HARD.”

Undyne’s single eye widened, and she snorted. “Sans… worked. Bullshit.”

“I SAW IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES! ERR- EYE SOCKETS. MY BROTHER IS A VERY SMART SKELE, YOU KNOW?”

“Yeah. Sure.” She patted Sans’s skull, making hollow bongo noises. “There’s a lot of grey matter in here, together with all the cobwebs.”

Sans snorted, and he had to bite his invisible tongue to not laugh. It wasn’t really the moment. Things were going to get ugly very quickly. But he liked this Undyne, when her berating comments weren’t directed at him.

“Also, I really like this version of you, Paps,” she said, pointing at his brother. “I dig the uniform.”

Papyrus’s skull reddened, and he did his best to keep his smugness at a hundred thousand percent. 

“WELL, OF COURSE YOU LIKE IT. IT IS PRETTY COOL.”

“okay, enough chatting for now,” Sans said, giving them a stern look. “put on the strap belts and get ready. i’ll turn on the thingy.”

“YES! I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE HOW IT IS WHERE YOU LIVE!”

“you don’t really want to.”

“WHAT?”

“nothing!”

Sans closed the metallic door before he could have any second thoughts, and he made sure everything was ready. He grabbed the control pad of the machine and searched for a connection. Alphys had told him she was going to keep her end of the connection active at all times… but a part of him hoped it wasn’t going to work. So they’d have an excuse…

CONNECTION FOUND. 

Oh, of course. Hoping was for stupid people, right?

Sans accepted the connection and he pressed the bright red button on the pad. The machine started humming and trembling, and he made a few steps backwards.

For a moment, he thought it was going to explode, then the lights in the room flickered out, together with all the lanterns in Snowdin’s town.

They came back a few seconds later.

Sans opened the port, a slight tremble in his fingers, and he looked inside the machine. 

There was nothing but mist, no traces of dust, nor melted clothes or anything body-horror related, thank the gods.

It had worked.

The monsters behind him cheered.

“That was so cool!”

“A neat magic trick!”

“Can I go in next?!”

Sans had never seen anyone so eager to die horribly, but yeah, sure, why not grant them their wish?

Asgore wasn’t going to kill him and his brother, if they brought more people with them right away: that had always been a part of the plan. But Sans had to stay on this side of the fence, if he wanted to activate the machine later, when the guards were going to invade this stupid, cute place, so he couldn’t follow his brother back to the wretched place they called home.

Papyrus was going to have to deal with things on his own for a while.

Chapter Text

The other Papyrus was still squeezing the other Sans close to his chest, when the other Undyne put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, buddy, we’ve arrived, I think,” she said. “You’re going to dust your brother, if you keep squeezing him like that.”

“O-oh,” the other Papyrus whispered. “S-sorry, Sans. I got scared for a moment.”

He eased his grip and looked at his brother. He seemed okay, besides the dark rings around his eye sockets. His soul was humming too slowly, though. He was going to need something to eat, once he woke up.

The heavy metallic door of the machine opened and, all of a sudden, Papyrus grabbed his brother.

The other Papyrus blinked in confusion for a second. His other self had a good reason to do that, right?

“HERE, TAKE HIM. ASGORE MAY BE INTERESTED IN HIM,” they heard him say from inside the pod.

“OTHER ME? WHAT’S- WHAT’S GOING ON?”

“Tch… I knew there was something fishy here,” the other Undyne grunted.

She pushed Papyrus away from the entrance, just in time to see the other Sans being secured with straps to a bed. His head lolled on his chest, and he didn’t give any sign of waking up. He was too tired to do it.

“Hey! What are you doing with the bonehead?!” 

A spear flickered in her hand, but she didn’t have the time to say ‘let him go’, that three darts pierced her right arm.

“Oh,” she said, frowning, as her magic rapidly retreated. “This is… really unfair…”

She fell on the ground with a loud thud, and the other Papyrus knelt by her side.

“UNDYNE! UNDYNE, SAY SOMETHING!” He looked towards Papyrus, confused and hurt. “What’s happening, other me? I thought we were friends!”

Papyrus didn’t even look back as he cleaned the dirt off of his red scarf. He walked towards the other guards and gave them a sign.

A moment later they were onto the other Papyrus, who got his skull pressed on the ground, while they were wrapping his wrists with ropes.

“LET ME GO! THIS IS VERY RUDE!” He squirmed, trying to get free, but there were too many of them. His eye lights darted towards his brother, who was being carried away by two other guards. “WHERE ARE YOU TAKING SANS? PLEASE, LET HIM BE! HE HASN’T DONE ANYTHING BA-“

“Oh my God, you’re so annoying,” hissed one of the guards, pushing a piece of cloth in his open mouth. “There. Scream all you want now.”

“HMMMFFN!”

“I didn’t mean it literally, dingus! Just shut up! And now get up. There are some people who really want to see you.”

The other Sans blinked slowly. 

Where was he?

His head felt heavy and he could barely think straight. He was so tired, even after sleeping for a while, and his stomach ached. He vaguely remembered the last thing he had eaten was lunch with his double, but it seemed like so long ago.

The other Sans tried to get up. His soul skipped a beat, when he realized he couldn’t. He was firmly held in place by leather straps around his neck, ankles and wrists, plus one on his spine. 

A wave of panicked confusion surged through him, and he looked around, trying to understand where the hell he was. 

The place looked somehow familiar, but, at the same time, everything was different… everything was wrong. So wrong. He couldn’t tell what was so bad about it. The air itself was nauseating.

“O-oh, look who woke up,” said a familiar voice. 

The other Sans caught a glimpse of two round glasses from the back of the room. A small figure came forward, and he recognized Alphys- that is to say, a lizard who looked like if Alphys had suddenly fallen in love with black and red striped shirts, and the goth subculture in general. 

The other Sans could have actually liked the style change, if it hadn’t been for the big syringe she was holding in her left hand and her creepy smile, as if she was wondering where she could stick its needle.

“hello,” the other Sans said, with a nervous smile. “i’m- uh… sans. sans the skeleton. and you must be alphys, right?”

“Oh, y-yes. Yes I am.” She chuckled as she started to lift up his shirt, searching for something.

“w-well, you c-could at least invite me to a dinner f-first, you know?” the other Sans said, wiggling in the restraints. “what are you gonna do with that thing?”

Alphys looked extremely unsettling for a few more seconds, holding the syringe right under his nasal cavity, then she laughed.

“Ahh d-don’t worry! I’m n-not going to pin this on your soul! Y-you should h-have seen your f-face, though!” She shook her head and rummaged in her pockets. She extracted a soul scanning device and pointed it to his chest. “I’ll j-just use this. I know a soul like yours c-can’t handle a lot of rough handling. But y-you actually believed I’d use it for a s-second, huh?”

“uh- heheh… heh… yea. what… what’s going on here though? i was helpin’ the other me buildin’ the machine just a few seconds ago, and then—“

“I’m a-afraid you didn’t get t-the memo.”

“the memo?”

“O-oh y-yeah. Sans and P-Papyrus were in charge of gaining your t-trust and pushing you to complete the machine. L-Looks like they s-succeeded.”

The other Sans’s features drooped. Maybe that heavy smell in the air was just the stench of betrayal. 

Goddamnit. Of course his bad copy had betrayed him. What did he expect?

The other Sans sighed. 

Welp, it didn’t really matter. Maybe it was better than being at home. At least there weren’t going to be anymore resets, so everything they did was going to matter, and—

Wait. Everything was going to matter. And the other Sans was a master in screwing up things - the fact that he had ended up tied to a bed because he had trusted the wrong people was pretty good evidence of that. 

All of a sudden not having the chance to try again seemed terrifying.

“Y-you only have o-one HP?!” Exclaimed Alphys, once the reading was completed.

The other Sans nodded.

“I figured your soul was w-weak, but geez! H-how? H-how did y-you even s-survive this l-long?!”

Sans chuckled, with a note of hysteria in his laughter. “guess ‘m just a lucky guy.”

“Y-yes, you can say th-that now,” Alphys snorted, going through the other results. “Oooh, look at this- y-you have k-karmic retribution p-powers, just l-like our S-Sans. He’s k-kinda lost his e-edge though, s-since he s-started to gain L-LV. T-The king will be p-pleased to have a b-better j-judge.”

The other Sans, who had been spacing out, focused his stare on her.

“there’s a mistake here,” he said. “i’m not the judge anymore. it’s been years and years, now.”

“Maybe y-you don’t understand y-your situation. Y-You don’t have a ch-choice, S-Sans. G-gosh it’s so weird to c-call you like this! Hahaha- um… anyway, A-Asgore could really use another j-judge, since there’s so many judgements h-here. It’s almost on a d-daily basis. Sans can’t take them a-all on his o-own, and A-Asgore is…” she looked behind her back, almost as if she feared to see him pop out of nowhere to get her, “… He’s very, very, vvvvery paranoid. So, a-all the help w-we can g-get him, w-we must g-give.”

The other Sans sighed again.

“me not gettin’ a choice is almost a cliché by now.”

“W-what?”

“nothin’. uh… did anyone else get dragged here with me, or am I the only lucky victim?”

“Y-your brother, I believe. T-together with your U-Undyne. There also are more monsters who are being t-transferred r-right this s-second.”

The other Sans’s skull had already blanched at the mention of the other Papyrus.

“m-my brother is- he is…? where is he now? what have you done to him? answer me!”

“W-woah, calm d-down, t-tiger,” Alphys said, with a sly smile. “Y-your brother is b-being t-transferred to the Royal Palace t-to meet U-undyne. T-they want to p-put him in the R-royal guard, I b-believe.”

“the royal guard?” The other Sans’s soul dropped to his feet. “they’ll chew him up.”

He tapped into his magic reserves, but, in the same moment he tried to access his magic, an electric charge went through his body, making him tremble like a leaf and dispelling his attacks.

Sans fell back on the bed, still trembling slightly. His cervical vertebrae were burning.

“Oh- sorry, I h-had forgotten about th-that! I p-put a collar on your neck to prevent y-you f-from doing s-stupid stuff. Like what you’ve d-done right n-now.”

“you bastards-“ he whispered under his breath. “when i’ll get my hands on the other me… i swear… and if anyone of you ever hurts my brother, i’ll get this thing off even if it kills me and i’ll make sure to drag ya all down with me.”

Alphys chuckled. “You a-are a tough cookie, h-huh? W-well. D-don’t worry. W-we know h-how to h-handle people like you here.” She tampered with the IV stand at Sans’s side, and he felt something piercing his arm. 

“gh! what did you just give me?” He hissed, trying to get free. 

“S-something to c-calm you down until y-you get to the palace. A-Asgore will be v-very happy to see y-you.”

“g-goddamn it, alphyssss— i almost thought you were nnnnnice… when i get free… i’ll sssshow yyyyou…”

He tried his best to look menacing, but all he managed to do was drool on the pillow.

Alphys gave him a pat on his skull.

“B-but I a-am nice! W-wait u-until you see th-the king, a-and we’ll t-t-talk about it, o-okay?! Hehe!”

Papyrus’s steps were echoing in the empty halls of the palace. Once it used to be pretty and well-kept, but now it looked more like a morgue. Since his kids had died and his wife had left him, King Asgore had slowly descended into insanity and, for some reason, had grown to love the same interior design of a vampire house. The walls had been painted with an ominous shade of red, and every other color was a shade of grey. 

Papyrus’s memories of how the Underground had used to be when he still was a baby-bones where so different that sometimes he asked himself if they were even real. The garden used to be neatly groomed, not covered in wild grass, spikey and venomous. Asgore’s magic had changed into something dangerous and stale, and it showed in his surroundings as well.

Papyrus was turning the angle, when he heard tiny steps getting closer, followed by the heavy stomps of a guard.

His soul trembled in a weird way, when he saw the other Sans being pushed towards the doors of the Judgement Hall. 

Papyrus had never seen him so tired. The small skeleton wasn’t even trying to smile, and he looked like he was on the verge of falling asleep out of exhaustion.

“could ya please stop pokin’ me with that thing, bud? you’re diggin’ a hole in my ribs.”

“Shut up and walk! Or I’ll turn on that thing again!” 

An almost unnoticeable shiver went through the other Sans.

“okay, okay! i’ll shut up.”

He took a deep sigh and he just flinched, when the spike of the guard poked his back again.

Papyrus thought it was the right time to clear his throat as loudly as he could.

The other Sans was so busy staring at his slippers that he didn’t even notice Papyrus.

“L-lieutenant!” the guard exclaimed, bringing a hand to his chest, right to his soul spot. “It’s an honor to meet you!”

The guard gave an angry look to the other Sans and nudged the sensitive area between his femur and the kneecap with the dull end of his spike. The other Sans’s legs bent, and he fell to his knees with a grunt.

“There, show some respect! I’m sorry, Lieutenant, he doesn’t understand.”

“YES, FROM WHAT I’VE SEEN IN THE HOURS I WAS STUCK IN THAT FILTHY PLACE HE CALLS A HOME, I HAVE WITNESSED HOW LITTLE HE CARES ABOUT PERSONAL SPACE AND SOCIAL COSTUMES IN GENERAL.”

The other Sans recognized his voice and lifted his gaze. His eye lights were dim and strangely wide. He wasn’t drunk, but he was unusually slow, and his smile needed a few more seconds to appear.

“loom!” He said, trying to get up. “do you know where my bro’s at?”

He received another hit behind the knees that made him fall back on the ground, this time face-planting on the clean floor with a squeak of bones.

Papyrus did his best not to cringe. He didn’t know why he was so bothered by other people hitting that pathetic creature. Maybe because he thought it wasn’t honorable to pick on those who were weaker than him, and he couldn’t even imagine to thrash a monster that was a blow away from being dust.

“No one said you could talk!” The guard was almost on the verge of a hysterical crisis. The last thing he wanted was to look stupid in front of Papyrus. “I’m carrying this unfortunately chatty prisoner to the king. Asgore wants to have a personal talk with him. I think the King needs him for some kind of job… this 1HP blob. Can you believe it, Lieutenant?” 

“IT’S KIND OF HILARIOUS, YES,” Papyrus said, trying to not look at the other Sans, who was squirming on the ground. With his hands tied it wasn’t that easy to get up. “YOU HAVE DONE WELL, GUARDSMAN. YOU CAN GO, NOW. I WILL BRING HIM TO ASGORE.”

“B-but-“ the guard squeaked, not amused at the perspective of not being praised for this important job.

“DO YOU HAVE ANY COMPLAINTS?”

The menacing red glow in Papyrus’s eye lights was enough to make him retreat.

“I- no! No, no, no! Of course not, you go, Lieutenant! I’m not bothered by you taking the merit of my job at all! HAHA!”

“THAT’S PERFECT. YOU CAN GO NOW.”

“Yes, of course! I’ll go! Just— uh… take this. Alphys gave it to me before. It’s a device that suppresses his magic. Not that I think a runt like him could ever harm you, Lieutenant, but, you know-“

“THANK YOU FOR THIS ELECTRONIC THINGY. I HEAVILY SUGGEST YOU TO LEAVE NOW, BEFORE I DECIDE TO FREE THE WORLD FROM YOUR PESKY EXISTENCE.”

The guard didn’t make him repeat himself, and a moment later he was already gone.

Papyrus put the controlling device in his pocket and gave a hateful look to the place were the guard was standing just a few seconds before.

Then he looked around three times to make sure no one was going to see him showing a sliver of compassion towards another living being - well, technically it wasn’t compassion… he was just doing this because he didn’t want to lose anymore time -, as he grabbed the other Sans’s hoodie to put him back to his feet.

“thanks for savin’ me from that meanie, loom. he had a stupid remote. he’s shocked me at least three times on the road. i feel like dirt. is asgore goin’ to be mad if i fall asleep while he talks?”

Papyrus sighed and gave him a quick check. 

SANS - 0.6 HP - YOUR BROTHER’S SAD AND PATHETIC COPY

FEELS BETRAYED

Oh well. He didn’t need a check to know that.

Papyrus was going to explain to Undyne about how that guard had almost dusted a very important prisoner that Asgore was interested in. He was going to enjoy the sight of the Captain giving him a good thrashing.

“I WOULD ADVISE YOU TO NOT FALL ASLEEP, PITIFUL CREATURE. EAT THIS.”

Papyrus looks something round and shiny out of the pocket of his uniform.

“eat wha— mh!”

The other Sans choked on the candy Papyrus had shoved in his open mouth. 

He was barely able to swallow and he went into a coughing fit.

“th-that tasted terrible! what the heck! is that supposed to be monster candy?! why does it taste so bad?”

His magic started to digest the candy, and a red glow shined through his hoodie.

The other Sans’s skull paled, and Papyrus caught him just in time, before he could keel over.

“gh… i feel like ‘m gonna throw up…”

What the hell was happening?

Papyrus tried to think of something and he remembered about his brother saying that the food wasn’t as good as it had used to be in their world. Like their magic, it had become poisonous for  the people who weren’t used to it.

What a drag.

Papyrus put a hand on the other Sans’s stomach, and then moved it towards his mouth. The monster candy had transformed into a lump of red magic, and it dissolved in the same moment it left the other Sans’s mouth.

The small skeleton sighed in relief, and his skull recovered some color. 

“Th-that was… something…” he whispered.

“THAT’S BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE ANY EXP. MAGIC MADE BY PEOPLE WITH LV IS IMBUED WITH THEIR INTENT, SO-“

“so it’s going to make me sick, ain’t it?” 

“W-WELL. WE CAN ALWAYS MAKE SOMETHING FOR YOU WHEN WE GET HOME. SOMETHING WITH LESS MURDEROUS INTENT, MAYBE.”

The other Sans chuckled sadly. “‘m afraid that’s not gonna happen. ‘m not here on a vacation, remember?”

Papyrus looked at him and he felt a cold hand grab his stomach. If he couldn’t eat their food, how was he going to make it? He already was so weak.

“loom… can you please tell me where my bro is?”

Papyrus avoided his stare. “I HAVE NOT MET THE OTHER ME SINCE WE LEFT THE MACHINE. I’VE BEEN TOLD HE’S TALKING WITH UNDYNE. HE’S UNHARMED, FROM WHAT I KNOW.”

The other Sans nodded. “that’s good. thanks for checking.”

He wiggled out of Papyrus’s hold and he stood on his own, even though his legs were trembling.

“c’mon. let’s go meet asgore and get this over with.”

The other Sans dragged his slippers on the floor and Papyrus followed him inside the Judgement Hall, ready to catch him if he fell again.

What could Papyrus give him to eat? Would some of his lasagna work? He could always sneak some of that inside his cell, or wherever Asgore decided to keep him in. 

But Papyrus had a high LV. Even higher than his brother’s. His food was going to dust the other Sans in the same moment he ate it.

Papyrus scratched his chin. That was a problem they had to solve as soon as possible. The other Sans needed to put something in his belly.

They got closer to the door of the throne room, and the other Sans suddenly stopped.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DIDN’T YOU WANT TO MEET THE KING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE?”

The other Sans didn’t answer. He was just standing there, staring into nothingness.

“PATHETIC WEAKLING? ARE YOU OKAY? ASGORE NEEDS YOU ALIVE, YOU KNOW? SO, IF YOU’RE FEELING LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO DIE SOON, PLEASE TELL ME, THANKS.”

Papyrus didn’t know how to snap him out of it. It was as if the other Sans had fallen into some kind of trance. 

He was tempted to give him a smack on the back of the skull, but in the end he just patted it. Was this how the other Papyrus gained his brother’s attention?

Just… pat-pat?

The other Sans gasped and stared at him. For a split second, he looked scared. It weirded Papyrus out, because he thought the other Sans couldn’t get scared. He usually just stood there and said stupid things.

“i— i’m sorry. must’ve freaked out for a moment. you know… the only times i’ve felt all this LV were when—“

The other Sans frowned for a second, and he shook his head.

“n-nevermind. it’s not important. let’s just get in.”

Papyrus asked himself who in the other Sans’s world could even have 19 LV. It was such a wimpy place. But the fear in his eye lights had been one of the most sincere feelings Papyrus had seen him display.

Chapter Text

The heavy door of the throne room opened with a slow creak, and they entered. The ground was covered in spiky plants that poked the other Sans’s feet; the buttercups he was used to see in the throne room had been replaced by dull, grey flowers with a red spot in the middle.

The air was heavy, filled with a thick, nauseatingly sweet smell. King Asgore was sitting on his throne, a menacingly imposing structure made out of obsidian, and he was tapping on the armrests with his sharp claws.

He was far more imposing than the Asgore the other Sans was used to: his armor was rusty - or were those blood stains? -, his fur of a dirt yellowish color, and it was as if the air itself surrounding him hummed slowly. The stank of LV that oozed from him made the other Sans freeze on the spot again. 

“Oh, hello there,” Asgore said, waiting for them to get closer. His voice was heavy and dusty like an old cloak, and it didn’t make the other Sans feel more at ease at all.

The other Sans hesitated and Papyrus pushed him forward.

“I see you have brought the prisoner as requested,” the king continued, stroking his black beard. “This is very good, Lieutenant. I will make sure to give you a proper reward for this. You can ask for anything you want and you will have it… in the limits of reason, of course.”

Papyrus nodded and brought a hand to his chest.

“THANK YOU, YOUR MAJESTY,” he said, bowing rigidly.

The other Sans’s eye lights, on the other hand, were fixed on Asgore. He couldn’t look away. It had been strange to meet his double and his brother’s as well, but this was on a whole new level. It was hard to believe the monster in front of him had anything to do with King Fluffybuns.

“Your name is Sans too, am I right, small one?” the king asked, giving the other Sans a smile that was supposed to be warm.

The other Sans swallowed and nodded.

“yes, your majesty,” he whispered. 

The king chuckled. His laugh had the same nauseating sweetness of the flowers surrounding his throne.

“I am sorry, but I cannot hear you from there. Could you please get a little closer? I know I can be a little intimidating, but I do not have any intention to harm you. In fact, you are extremely precious to me.”

Papyrus was about to push the other Sans again, but the small skeleton moved on his own, dragging his feet between the spikes. He reached the throne, and Asgore bent down to look at him.

All of a sudden Papyrus became aware just of how small the other Sans was. His brother had looked pretty small next to a monster as powerful as King Asgore, but not like this. It was like watching a vulture sniff a bunny.

All of a sudden, Asgore grabbed the other Sans with a paw, and Papyrus’s breath hitched in his ribcage. He was already in an attack position, when he realized Asgore was just holding Sans closer so he could look at him in the eye sockets.

Papyrus was quick to recover his normal posture, but couldn’t prevent cold sweat from gathering on his skull.

“You are a small fragile thing, are you not?” 

Asgore chuckled to himself as he held the other Sans. His small feet were dangling in the air, his arms glued to his sides.

“i guess i am,” said the other Sans, trying to smile. “i don’t know how well i could serve you, your majesty. i’m kinda weak. i don’t think i can be a better judge than the one you already have. i don’t even have any exp…”

“And that is precisely why I want you here!” Asgore exclaimed, tapping with a big index on the other Sans’s chest. “I cannot trust any of these schmucks, you know? With all their LV… always plotting behind my back… I cannot even sleep at night, sometimes!” He laughed to himself, as if he had just told the funniest joke ever, then he cleared his throat and continued. “What I need is someone whom I can always bring with me. Someone who tells me which people I can trust. You have just what it takes. As for our Sans, he can still be the Judge. He has been doing a satisfying job, however, with his LV… you never know, am I right?”

Asgore gave the other Sans a gentle caress on his skull, as if he was a shiny new toy, and he made him seat on his knee. 

“There. We don’t need this barbaric methods,” he said, cutting the rope tying the other Sans’s wrists. “You will see. You will live just fine, here.”

“th-thank you, your majesty,” the other Sans said, massaging his sore bones.

He had a smile plastered on his face, and yet, when he looked towards Papyrus, his eye lights were screaming “please get me the hell out of here”.

“However, I am afraid we will have to keep that device on you,” Asgore said, one of his claws ticking against the metal of Sans’s collar, “but I will not use it unless you try to do something extremely reckless. Dr.Alphys told me how fragile you are, so I will handle you with all the due care.” 

The other Sans touched the collar, feeling the chips covered in metal underneath his fingers. That wasn’t going to be easy to break, without his magic. He had never seen one of those before.

“I hope you understand my reasons.”

“of course. you don’t know if you can trust me. i get it, your majesty. you don’t even know me, right?”

For some reason, Asgore found his answer extremely amusing and he chuckled, covering his muzzle with a paw.

“I could not have said it better.” He looked at Papyrus and smiled to him. “I am very satisfied with the result of your mission, Lieutenant. If you have thought about your reward, you can ask right away.”

Asgore petted the other Sans’s skull, and the small skeleton stiffened, trying to control the soft rattling noises coming from his bones.

“I… I THOUGHT ABOUT IT, YOUR MAJESTY. AND, SINCE THIS SMALL CREATURE SEEMS TO BE REALLY FRAIL, I THOUGHT HE COULD USE SOMEONE TRUSTWORTHY TO GUARD HIM. WHAT I ASK IS TO BE ALLOWED TO WATCH OVER HIM.”

Both Asgore and the other Sans had the same astonished expression. Soon after, the king’s hardened, while the small skeleton’s seemed a little more hopeful.

“Why are you so interested in him?” Asgore asked, his black irises glowing red. 

Papyrus hesitated for a moment, and the king gasped, as he realized something.

“Oh, of course! He reminds you of your brother, doesn’t he? Silly me. Of course you want to keep him safe.” He sighed. “Well, if this is the reason, you can keep an eye on him while he is not busy with his new job. You have always been a loyal guardsman, so I trust you to not do anything stupid, Lieutenant… or the consequences, as much as it saddens me to say this, will be dire.”

Papyrus stiffly nodded.

“Perfect. Then, since you asked, you can bring him to his new room. He looks in pretty bad shape. What happened to him? I hope you have not roughed him up too much.”

Asgore gently put the other Sans on the ground and the small skeleton stumbled towards Papyrus. He looked shellshocked, but he was doing his best to keep his chill.

“IT SEEMS LIKE A GUARDSMAN HAS BEEN A LITTLE TOO GENEROUS WITH THE SUPPRESSING COLLAR. I INTERVENED JUST IN TIME TO SAVE THIS PITIFUL- I MEAN, THIS SMALL CREATURE.”

Asgore covered his mouth with a hand.

“Oh, poor thing,” he said, some semblance of sincere worry making his voice more high-pitched. “I’ll make sure that villain gets thrown down Waterfall’s pit. This is what meanies like those deserve.”

“I COULDN’T AGREE MORE, YOUR MAJESTY,” Papyrus said,  with a grin. At least something had gone right for the day.

Not that he cared about the other Sans, but he couldn’t deny the raw satisfaction rising from the bottom of his soul.

Papyrus felt the other Sans shiver at his side, but he ignored him. Come on, he should have been happy to know the king was going to leave him in capable hands.

“I reserved Sans a small room close to mine. I think he will like it.” Asgore waved a hand towards Sans with a smile that was all stained, sharp teeth. “See you after your slumber, small one!”

The other Sans answered with a weak smile and followed Papyrus out of the throne room. 

He kept silent all the way towards the elevator, and he stood in a corner, expressionless.

That was the longest the other Sans had stayed silent. Papyrus was starting to worry.

Once the elevator doors closed and an annoying background jingle started, Papyrus lowered his gaze on Asgore’s new helper.

“YOU LOOK RATHER GHASTLY, SAD SANS. ARE YOU OKAY?”

The other Sans shook his head.

“WELL, THAT’S EXPECTED. NO ONE IS OKAY HERE AFTER ALL… BUT HOW DO YOU FEEL?”

“do you wanna know how i feel?”

The other Sans burst into a bitter laugh.  

“well, i feel like i’m in a cage with walls covered in flaming swords that are slowly closing in, while the floor is covered in venomous snakes and the ceiling in killer bees. does that give the right idea of how i feel?”

The other Sans took a deep shuddery breath and he gained his composure back.

“my life’s a joke with a bad punchline,” he muttered, staring at his slippers. He stayed in silence for a brief moment, then he smiled a little, and this time it was more sincere. “however, i must say i really appreciated your help back there, loom. thanks for not letting me stay with asgore full time.” His smile drooped. “it’s soul-wrenching to see him like this. he’s such a sweet guy.”

“OUR KING IS MANY THINGS, SAD SANS, BUT ‘SWEET’ ISN’T THE WORD I’D USE TO DESCRIBE HIM.”

“maybe ‘insane’ is more fittin’. how did things even get to this point?”

Papyrus tightened his fists, his leather gloves creaking menacingly.

“SAD SANS, IF YOU DIDN’T HAVE 1 HP AND WEREN’T UNDER ASGORE’S PROTECTION, I WOULD HAVE HIT YOU. DO NOT SPEAK ILL OF THE KING WHILE I AM AROUND.” He narrowed his eyelids, his eye lights getting a deeper hue of red. The other Sans looked back at him with a blank expression, then he lowered his gaze. Papyrus closed his eye sockets for a moment, trying to calm down. “THE KING AND UNDYNE DID A LOT FOR ME AND MY BROTHER. IF IT WEREN’T FOR THEM, WE WOULD HAVE STARVED A LONG TIME AGO.”

The other Sans didn’t react. Then, he said, talking slowly, as if he barely had the strength to speak: “i don’t know what happened here or to you and your bro. that’s why i’m askin’. ya can tell me. where the hell am i goin’ to go, anyway? i’m trapped here, now. ya might as well fill me in.”

Papyrus reflected on his observation. The other Sans wasn’t wrong. With that collar on, he wasn’t going to escape anytime soon. No shortcuts for him. 

“THERE ARE TOO MANY MONSTERS UNDER THIS MOUNTAIN, SAD SANS. THE RESOURCES ARE LIMITED,” Papyrus said, with a lower voice tone than usual. “ONCE YOU START TO GO HUNGRY, YOU DISCOVER THAT BEING GOOD IS HARD AND THAT PEOPLE GIVE IN TO THEIR INSTINCTS FAR MORE EASILY THAN WHAT YOU USED TO THINK. BUT, MOST OF ALL, YOU DISCOVER THAT IF YOU ARE NOT DISPOSED TO STEP ON OTHERS TO SURVIVE… YOU’LL BE THE NEXT TO BE STEPPED ONTO.”

Papyrus felt the other Sans’s stare on his skull. He didn’t look down. He didn’t want to meet his gaze and see pity in it. 

Papyrus cleared his throat before the small skeleton could say anything and he continued.

“WARS FOR TERRITORY AND FOOD BECAME MORE AND MORE FREQUENT, IT WAS A MESS. ASGORE TRIED TO KEEP ORDER, BUT IT WAS BECOMING HARDER AND HARDER, ESPECIALLY AFTER THE HUMAN SOULS DISAPPEARED.”

“the human souls… disappeared? do you have any idea of what happened to them?”

Papyrus had a sharp remark on the tip of his invisible tongue - would they be here, if that was the case? -, but then he swallowed it.

“NO. WE LOOKED EVERYWHERE FOR THEM. WE ARE STILL LOOKING. AND YET, NOTHING.”

The other Sans nodded. “that sucks.”

“EVEN THOUGH I DON’T APPROVE OF THIS VOCABULARY OF YOURS, YES, IT ‘SUCKS’. ANYWAYS… AFTER THAT, THERE WERE MANY REVOLTS. ASGORE AGAIN HAD TO KEEP ORDER SOMEHOW AND STARTED TO USE MORE DIRECT METHODS.”

“including killin’ other monsters to set an example i suppose.”

“YOU SUPPOSE CORRECTLY.”

The other Sans swallowed. 

“did he… did he ever make you…?”

Papyrus clenched his teeth. “I DID WHAT I HAD TO.” 

The other Sans flinched. “oh, loom… i’m-“

“DON’T SAY YOU’RE SORRY. IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE ROYAL GUARD AND THE KING THIS PLACE WOULD BE A WASTELAND. IF I DIDN’T KILL THOSE MONSTERS, MAYBE MY BROTHER WOULD HAVE BEEN—“

Maybe Sans would have been in their place. 

Kill or be killed, right? 

And sometimes, it was better if others were killed, instead of the people he cared about. As hard as that was to say… to even admit to himself.

There was a time he didn’t want anyone to die. He still didn’t like violence without a purpose, but, if he had to, he was going to, no matter how hard it was, or if he felt bad about it. 

“IT’S NOT IMPORTANT. WHAT MATTERS IS THAT EVEN HAVING A KING DRIVEN MAD BY HIS OWN ACTIONS IS BETTER THAN ANARCHY. IF WE LEFT A BUNCH OF HUNGRY AND DEPSERATE MONSTERS TO THEIR OWN DEVICES… THERE WOULDN’T EVEN BE A KINGDOM, HERE.”

This time, Papyrus looked at the other Sans, almost to challenge him to say something, to make a joke. The small skeleton looked like he had never had less fun in his life.

“i understand,” he whispered, in the end.

Papyrus raised an eyebrow.

“YOU DO?”

The other Sans avoided his gaze. “to protect people you care about, sometimes you end up doing pretty nasty things… to other people, to them and even to yourself.” 

He took a deep sigh and Papyrus caught a glimpse of something dark and tired that the small skeleton wasn’t always able to hide.

“i know you don’t want or need to hear my words, but… i wish you didn’t have to go through this. you still are a good monster, loom. it’s more than what most people have down here, i think. try to hold on to that.”

Papyrus gave him a funny look. That sad lump giving him an uplifting speech? That was something he hadn’t expected to see.

They stayed in silence for a few seconds, then the other Sans whispered: “i’m gonna die in this place, ain’t i?”

“DON’T SAY IDIOTIC THINGS. YOU ARE UNDER ASGORE’S PROTECTION. THERE ISN’T A SAFER PLACE THAN THE PALACE.”

The other Sans chuckled. 

“oh yea? heh… and how long before he freaks out on me and kills me on the spot? i can’t even use my magic to defend myself.” He tweaked with the collar and then let his arm fall back to his side. “i’m screwed. you could even say i’m royally screwed. hehehe. heh…” Sans sighed. “listen, loom… if i don’t make it, would ya look after paps for me? i know he’s a grown up monster, but… he needs someone. and it’s all my fault he ended up here anyway. all ‘cause i trusted gloom.”

“WELL. I PLAYED MY PART IN TRICKING YOU AS WELL. AM I NOT AN UNTRUSTWORTHY PARTY ANYMORE?” Papyrus said, finding it a little ridiculous that the other Sans was playing down his part in the villainous plan. 

The other Sans’s expression softened. “nah… i’m afraid i have a soft spot for ya. i know you aren’t all bad, deep down, and ya look too much like my bro, both in and out. can’t really bring myself to hate ya.”

Papyrus felt a red glow creep up on his skull and he was quick to look away.

“TCH! THIS IS- THIS IS HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE!”

If that sad creature was trying to make him feel bad, it wasn’t going to work. If he had crumbled every time someone looked at him with a sappy expression, he wouldn’t be alive. And he wouldn’t have 12 LV.

“i know,” the other Sans said, with a small smile. “but what can ya do ‘bout it… that’s just how it is.”

The elevator’s doors opened, and they both winced.

They stumbled out of the elevator, both rattled by their conversation, and the other Sans’ stomach decided that was the right moment to growl.

The small skeleton gave Papyrus an embarrassed smile. “i know this is very prosaic after what we talked about, but- isn’t there anythin’ i can eat here? i’d even eat cardboard right now.”

Papyrus crossed his arms, his foot tapping on the ground.

“I COULD TRY TO PREPARE YOU SOMETHING. BUT I HAVE LV AS WELL.”

Sans made a grimace. “yea. not much to be done ‘bout it then. guess starvation will get me first. sucks for asgore’s plans! oh well.”

Papyrus gave him a stern look and he grabbed tightly the other Sans’s shoulders. 

“uh- loom?”

“I KNOW WHAT TO DO, SAD COUCH POTATO. WE JUST HAVE TO MAKE THE OTHER ME PREPARE YOU SOMETHING… OR MAKE YOU KILL SOMEONE AND GAIN SOME EXP! THAT’S AN OPTION TOO, YOU KNOW.“

“i’ll go with the terrible spaghetti, thank you,” said the other Sans, with a tight smile. “that’s a great idea though, loom. i didn’t even think about it.”

Papyrus smiled smugly. “THAT’S BECAUSE YOUR INTELLECT IS THAT OF AN INFERIOR BEING.”

He patted the other Sans’s skull in a condescending manner.

He turned around the corner and grabbed the other Sans’s hoodie to prevent him from going into another corridor.

“FOLLOW ME PATHETIC CREATURE, OR YOU’LL GET LOST.”

The other Sans obediently trailed behind him, looking around.

“anyways… this place is really nice,” he said, with a snort. “who does the interior design? the grim reaper?”

“NO, HE DOESN’T DO THAT. ASGORE ASKED HIM THOUGH.”

The other Sans blinked in confusion, but couldn’t ask more information, because Papyrus dragged him inside a small room.

It was extremely luxurious, with a soft moquette that massaged the other Sans’s sore feet and a huge bed with black blankets. A little gloomy, but really comfy.

The other Sans wasn’t expecting such a treatment, but Asgore had indeed said he was going to handle him with care. He didn’t have anything to eat and was probably going to die in a few days, but at least he was going to sleep well.

“oh… this is the stuff…” the other Sans moaned, letting himself fall on the bed. “this is the comfiest bed i’ve ever sat on. i’m so… so tired…”

The other Sans’s eyelids drooped and his breath slowed down. A moment later he was sleeping, while cradling a piece of Papyrus’s scarf, who was standing next to the bed.

The tall skeleton sighed and detangled the other Sans’s tiny fingers from his scarf, manhandling him under the covers.

The ability of his brother’s sad copy to fall asleep in a matter of seconds kept surprising him.

“YOU BETTER REST NOW.”

The other Sans didn’t say anything, for once.

“THAT’S THE RIGHT ATTITUDE. I’LL LEAVE FOR A LITTLE WHILE, NOW. DON’T DO STUPID THINGS WHILE I LOOK FOR YOUR BROTHER AND FOR FOOD… STUPID THINGS LIKE TRYING TO ESCAPE. BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE BAD. AND IT WOULD BE EVEN WORSE IF IT WAS ASGORE WHO CAUGHT YOU INSTEAD.”

He shook the other Sans, who stayed limp in his hold, his skull lolling on his chest.

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

A snoring noise came from the small skeleton.

“GOOD.”

Chapter Text

The other Sans woke up in the middle of the night. For a moment, he had no idea where he was or how he had arrived there. It wasn’t uncommon for him to wake up in strange places; sometimes, when he had nightmares, he took a shortcut in his sleep and ended up in the snow or in a puddle of water in Waterfall. He had always been lucky, he had never fallen into deep waters, but, once the memories of Gloom’s very predictable betrayal came back to him, he thought that Waterfall wouldn’t have been such a bad ending for this run after all.

Sans yawned and stretched. His spine popped in a few points and he took a sigh of relief. 

He slid down the bed. His naked feet met the cold floor. He looked at his tired face reflected on the black tiles and he took a deep breath. He still had that collar. 

The other Sans experimentally let some of his magic flow in his left arm, and the collar buzzed menacingly. The small skeleton immediately retreated his energy. There was no use. He couldn’t take more of those electric shocks. His HP was now restored, together with some extra points he had obtained from sleeping, but it was better to save them in case something else happened. And, looking at his situation, the other Sans knew that possibility wasn’t that far fetched.

The other Sans explored the room more. He opened drawers and checked inside the closet, but they both were empty, except for a series of old uniforms that felt awfully familiar. His Asgore had tried to make him wear one of the frilly clothes the other judges had used before him. King Fluffybuns had surrendered once he realized Sans was furthest from the formal type as anyone could get and that he didn’t want the attention such a role implied. 

The other Sans put everything back in order and got closer to the door. 

“loom?” He whispered. 

Nobody answered, and yet the other Sans felt the heavy breathing of a monster on the other side.

It probably was another Royal Guard. Of course they weren’t going to leave him alone, in spite of Loom saying he was going to be the one taking care of him.

The other Sans snorted. Yeah, taking care… he couldn’t really hate Loom for dragging both his brother and himself in that place, he looked and was - deep down - too much like his Papyrus. However, the other Sans couldn’t just stay there and take it. The Asgore of their edgy copies’ world was like a Damocle’s sword hanging above his cervical vertebrae, ready to snap at any point.

The other Sans had to grab his brother and the other Undyne and get out of there as soon as possible.

He didn’t have his magic, but he wasn’t stupid. He could come up with another way to get out.

If the layout of the palace was anything like the one at home, the room he was in was the main guest room, where he had passed a night or two when he used to work as a judge and was too tired to go back home for the night.

The other Sans tried to open the window. The lock moved easily. A cold breeze caressed his skull, making him shiver in his hoodie. He looked down and a wave of nausea hit him. He stepped back for a second, pressing a hand on his chest. Yep, it was as high as he remembered, and if he fell down there he wasn’t going to be able to count on a reset for another chance. Why did palaces have to be that big? They made escaping from a mad king unnecessarily complicated.

The other Sans looked at the bed. The sheets were long enough to provide a safety line if he wanted to move around and explore. The windows that gave into the rooms were pretty close to one another. The sheets were long enough to reach the closest ones.

The other Sans passed the next minutes tying up the sheets, making sure they held him. He was a light weight, lucky for him, and that wasn’t going to be a problem. He took out the judge uniforms and used them to extend his rope even further. 

He then tested the rope’s resistance by tying it to the bed. 

The other Sans secured the rope to his ribcage, making a tight jacket out of it. 

He then slowly climbed the window, casting nervous glances at the door, fearing that the guard was going to burst inside at any moment.

It was weird how much the idea of having only one chance to do things right could make him so nervous. The other Sans had come to rely on resets a lot, as much as he hated them. What was death, once it happened daily? He closed his eyes and then he was back in his bed every morning, with his brother yelling at him it was time to go to work. It had just become another part of his life. 

The other Sans had died in so many ways, both in the other Flowey and the other Frisk’s resets. He had been stabbed, snapped and poisoned, the other Undyne had killed him a few times out of anger after he had let his brother die, the other Flowey had thrown him down the bridge of Snowdin, tortured him, held his soul in his vines, and a couple times the other Sans had died by his own hand, whether while working on the machine that had blown up, or by just letting himself fall down out of exhaustion.

But he had never yet died by throwing himself down the palace’s windows in a rotten version of his world while actually trying to do something, for once. What an exciting new ending: the other Frisk for sure would have appreciated this new twist.

The other Sans swallowed and slid outside the window.

“here goes nothin’,” he murmured, squeezing himself against the stone wall. He could feel it scraping against his bones, solid and supporting, and yet he didn’t feel one bit safer, as he slid towards the closest window, on his left.

don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down.

Now the air, instead of making him feel freer, reminded him of how little he needed to fall to his death - a terrible, agonizing one as well.

The other Sans closed his eye sockets for a second and stiffened, his kneecaps quivering. He couldn’t stop there. He was halfway through. He had to get to the other window. 

The other Sans had gone through far worse, he could make it.

He opened his eye sockets again and went forward, trying to ignore the abyss waiting for him down below.

When his bony fingers finally reached the glass of the window, he took a small breath of relief, that quickly turned into horror as he realized the window could be opened only from the inside. 

oh no. no, no, no!

His soul was beating so fast he thought it was going to burst out of his chest. He needed to calm down. He couldn’t let himself panic, or he was going to be dust. And who was going to help his brother and the other Undyne, then?

The other Sans touched the glass. It wasn’t too thick. He could break it, if he wanted. But hitting so hard was going to destroy his hand… and his HP. 

The small skeleton slowly and carefully took off his jacket and wrapped it around his right hand, while steading himself with the other one. Luckily, there was more space to move so close to the window. 

The other Sans looked for the handle, and then he hit the glass with all his strength. He grimaced when he barely left a crack in the window. It was going to hurt, even with the hoodie to protect his bones from the glass shards.

The other Sans took a deep breath, then he hit the glass again, and again and again, until the cracks became deeper and spread further. The pain almost numbed his fingers.

He had felt worse. He had felt worse. 

The other Sans gave one last hit to the window and almost fell backwards, when the glass suddenly broke. The small skeleton steadied himself, his soul thumping in his skull like a war drum, and he let his hoodie fall on the other side. He managed to twist the handle and the window finally opened.

The other Sans got inside and, with a whimper, he fell on a dusty carpet. He let himself shake there for a few minutes, holding his arms tightly. Then, he dared check the conditions of his hand. It wasn’t that bad. His knuckles were covered in little cracks, but it could have been worse.

He had lost two HP points, though. 

The other Sans took his hoodie back with his left hand and looked around for something to wrap around his wounded hand.

All of a sudden, he stopped. 

That room looked very familiar.

The air was thick and heavy, as if that area had been closed for a long, long time. There were two beds in the middle of the room, and they looked cold, as if they had turned into stone sculptures. There was a familiar photo hanging from the wall, covered by a layer of dust. 

The other Sans slid out of his security jacket and got closer to the photo. He cleaned the glass with his good hand and he took a deep sigh. 

The photo portrayed two small kids, a human and a small goat monster. The other Sans instantly recognized Chara. It was a little different from the troubled kid he used to know, but, besides being a boy in this world and having more marked features, Chara had the same piercing stare. It was like even though he was smiling in this picture, the happiness never reached his eyes. 

As for Asriel, he looked pretty similar to the one in the other Sans’s world. His clothes were different and the eyes were red instead of yellow, but that was it. 

The other Sans’s hand throbbed, as if to remind him it needed his attention, and he opened a drawer of one of the nightstands. The small skeleton found one of Asriel’s old handkerchiefs, big enough to cover his whole hand. 

After bandaging himself, the other Sans went for the door. He listened in silence for a while and, when he deemed it was secure enough, he gave the handle a try. 

The door, however, was closed. The other Sans wasn’t very surprised by that. His Asgore had closed his kids’ room a long time before, and, even though this version of him was a complete lunatic, his madness stemmed from the same event that had pushed King Fluffybuns to collect human souls. Loosing everything in one day wasn’t the best thing for a monster’s mental health.

The other Sans looked around. If this was the kids’ room, there had to be something he could use to open the door. The other Sans didn’t dare to try opening the collar on his own because he had never seen one of those things, but he had faith in his ability to pick an old lock. When he used to be a baby-bones and he lived in the orphanage with his brother, he had become a master in sneaking inside the kitchen and stealing ketchup packets. Who would have thought that ability would have come in handy again.

The other Sans found some old hair clips in Chara’s drawer, amongst a stuffed doll, some crayons and an album full of drawings. He was tempted to look at them, but he didn’t have the time to do so. 

So, holding a hair clip, he gave the lock a try. It was rusty and old due to the lack of use, but, after a few minutes, Sans was finally able to open it without letting the hair clip break inside it.

The door opened with a creak, and the other Sans peeked outside. He was far enough from the guest room to not be seen by the guard, and there weren’t any close to the kids’ room. Not that there was anyone to protect there anymore… only sad memories of a better past.

The other Sans moved in silence, sliding from one heavy red curtain to the other. Maybe Asgore’s fashion sense wasn’t as bad of a choice as he had thought.

Now that the small skeleton wasn’t as scared as before, the pain from his hand increased, and his stomach had started to growl. 

The other Sans pressed a hand on it, as if to shush it. He had rested, but he felt dizzy due to hunger. The worst thing was that he couldn’t eat anything made by a monster with LV. And were there even monsters without LV, in this world? 

Maybe Loom could have prepared food pure enough to eat in spite of his LV, but even though the other Sans liked him, Loom didn’t have that kind of link with him. He wasn’t his brother, he thought of him as a useless… what had he said? Oh, yeah, that he was “an uneducated trash-talking troll”, so that probably meant Loom didn’t appreciate the way the other Sans was all that much, and those feelings would have projected in his own magic, if he ever tried to prepare food for him.

So, even though the other Sans didn’t like putting Loom in trouble by escaping, he really couldn’t stay there. And even though they had a plan to get help from his brother… the other Sans had to get his brother and Undyne out of there. He couldn’t do what Loom wanted only because he thought he wasn’t that bad of a guy. He had to think of his family first, too.

Where would his brother be, though? 

Loom had mentioned the other Papyrus was training with Undyne… the one of this world. Which, in itself, was an extremely worrying occurrence. 

They were training somewhere in the palace and, if the place was the same as the one the other Undyne used at home, it had to be the area on the back of the castle, rocky and flat, perfect for fighting… and not so perfect for hiding.

But the other Sans was going to think about how to solve that later. He first needed to get there.

The small skeleton walked down the stairs, hid in corridors and waited for guards to go beyond his hiding place.

Then, he finally reached plan zero. 

It was awfully close to the judgement hall - Asgore still had to be in his throne room, because the other Sans could feel his LV oozing through the bottom of the door - and to the graves of the human children.

Where they down there, still? 

If the resets had stopped, as Gloom had said… wait. 

Why was the other Sans giving any weight to what Gloom had said, anyway? He was a liar and a cheat. He could have lied all the time, for what he knew, about everything, even the smallest things.

But, if the resets had stopped… that meant that Frisk…?

The other Sans stopped in front of the corridor that lead to the basement. He had never asked Gloom anything about his kid,  and the sly bastard had been extremely vague about them on purpose, but the other Sans had guessed that something had happened to Frisk. As Gloom had said, ‘they had found a way to stop resets’. The other Sans knew that ‘they’ didn’t include the kid’s collaboration, and that it referred to Gloom and others acting on Asgore’s orders.

So, there were high chances Frisk had died. But, if that was the case, and monsters had obtained the seventh soul, why hadn’t Asgore absorbed the other human souls and used them to break the barrier? The other Sans knew that the mad king was the kind of monster who would have loved to wreck havoc on the surface and make humans pay for everything they had done to him and his family, becoming a killer of people that didn’t even have anything to do with the deeds their ancestors had committed centuries before. Maybe humans nowadays didn’t even believe in monsters, as far as the other Sans knew. 

The other Sans swallowed. There was something big going on in this world, and the only thing he was sure about was how much he didn’t know. 

The small skeleton looked at the garden, visible from one of the windows. The back of the castle was easily accessible from there and no one was around. 

It was better for everyone if he discovered what Asgore was really up to first, now that he had the chance to do it.

And something told him his answer was down there.