Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It didn't hurt, which he supposed was an unexpected good, given that he was. Well. Dying. Papyrus felt something thud against his back, between his shoulder blades, then collapsed forward against the doppelganger, suddenly unable to stand. And a force rushed in and pushed his mind back, and all was darkness.

And.

And he opened his eyes?

Not that he had eyes anymore, he knew that, but what else was he supposed to say? That he had been seeing nothing; then he suddenly started seeing again?

Seeing an unpolished concrete floor.

That he stared at uncomprehendingly as he knelt unmoving and got used to being in a body again. Everything felt bad, but some badnessess stood out particularly! Such as his brain, which was wrapped in itchy wool. Such as the awful smell, a rotting sickly sweet. And his throat, which had a shard of glass stuck in it. He swallowed and winched, hand automatically coming up.

Ah, but there was nothing but bone. He no longer had a throat, even though he still ate and spoke. The other monsters laughed at him for using his human descriptions, but, well. He still felt like he had his old body.

He scrapped his hands over his eyes. Eye sockets. Whatever. Then he looked around.

It was concrete all, floor, walls, ceiling.

The wall in front of him had a reinforced door that stood partly open, but it was too dark for him to see through the doorway. The wall behind him had a long narrow window, way up top along the ceiling, which let in the only light to see by. It was a rich honey light; even the ugly smelly room it shone into couldn't stop it from being beautiful. He already knew he couldn't reach the window. So instead he shuffled backwards so he could see through it.

Gold. A glorious gold wisped with white. He could not place it. What part of the underground was like this? Hotland was a ruddier glow. And the wetland was a vivid blue. And Snowdin was a silvery glimmering.

As he thought he ran his thumb along his fingers, feeling the notches from the small bones. No gloves? Then he looked at his hand. Then his arm. Then the rest of him.

And closed his eyes and tried not to scream in frustration. Where were his clothes?!? Why wasn't he wearing any?!! Urgh, this was so stupid. He rummaged through his inventory, which was mostly inexplicably full of black muck, and pulled out a shirt. The shirt was much too big for him and. Oh. There was writing on the shirt?

For a second he squinted at the upside-down-to-him graphic of flowers, skulls and letters, before the shapes pulled together in his mind and became words: flower boy.

He grasped a fistful of material in each hand. Okay. He didn't know how to read. But he just did.

Panic fluttered in the back of his mind, a wild inarticulate emotion: he DIED. But he's HERE. And he could read now. Apparently. That was a thing he could just do now. And the light was weird. And where the heck was he?

The awful smell became a lot stronger as the door was pulled wide open.

Papyrus jumped and craned his neck around to face it, shuffling backwards on his tail bone as three people entered the room: two dogs and one fully armoured individual. He recognised the armour. Sentries. And a decorated member of the royal guard? Ah, but they couldn't be. Instead of the delta rune they had a love heart as their coat of arms. It was definitely the same amour though, even if the symbol had been buffed out and painted over with a new one.

He looked up from the enamelled red heart to their faces.

They looked down at him. They seemed...

Without thinking Papyrus breathed in, both through his nose and mouth, filling his lungs.

The rotting smell was fading, cut through by a thin raininess, that picked up a sharp note of cinnamon. He taped the place his nose had been when he was a child.

And he knew, he was absolutely certain to his soul, that they were confused and also increasingly shocked. Though Papyrus didn't know why. And they weren't as shocked as he was! How did he know what they were feeling? Papyrus had never ever been able to tell what people were feeling. It was a flaw of his, the flaw of his, one baked so deep into him that even rebirth hadn't been able to remove it where it could remove LOVE.

One of the dogs steeled themselves and held out a hand to him, "If you are ready, Papyrus, King Asgore would like to speak to you. Right now."

Papyrus had only half a second to think. But appearing obedient was a priority, especially given the presence of the royal guard. He made sure to sound only polite. "Is he waiting? Oh no!" And he took her hand, "Let's go right away to see him!"

She pulled him up to stand, where he had to take particular care with how he placed his feet so he didn't fall over because of the pain in his joints. But he showed none of what he felt and allowed himself to be lead out of the cell, down the dark corridor beyond.

The other dog walked on his left, the guard walked behind them all. They passed few more cells, and then a kitchen, and finally came to two very large double doors, which stood open.

Through it was very large room, with a wood ceiling and a red and grey carpet. Along all four walls were the same narrow windows that ran along the ceiling, so that light slanted into the room, casting everything in gold and bronze.

It would be an imposing room, it was probably meant to be one, but it was also full of stacks of furniture, tables and benches in tall piles, clusters of office chairs, study cubicles and empty book shelves, echoes of everything this room had ever been.

To the very back, by another set of doors, there was a space that had been cleared and set up. A throne faced a chair. Seats arranged beside the throne in a line. A table, with tea and coffee, off to the side. A small crowd of monsters.

Papyrus instantly recognised his majesty, the king Asgore, who was by far the tallest: his caprine horns almost touching the ceiling. Then there were two guards crossing axes over the doors. A yellow perentie in a lab coat. A remnant in a blue hoodie. One rabbit holding a clipboard and another sitting with a laptop. No, something just like a rabbit? Rabbit shaped. Also a small white dog.

Actually, a lot of dogs?

The rotting smell was overwhelming. Bad. Everyone, every single creature in this crowd, absolutely hated him, he had no doubt of it.

Then the king caught sight of him, of all of them, walking into the room.

The king's eyes went wide, as he turned to face them. This caught everyone else's attention, and they all turned likewise.

And. Wowie. They were very upset? The perentie gasped out loud, the dogs howled softly. There was movement throughout the crowd: people turned to each other, fists were clenched. It was a lot, and Papyrus was suddenly very very nervous. He was used to people hating him. He had less practice with sadness. Everything smelled of sadness now, a sopping wet saltiness, like drowning in the ocean.

What a strange thing for his mind to think. He had never been to the ocean, never even seen it. How did he know what it smelt like?

The king was the first to recover, "Howdy, my friend!" he called to Papyrus, coming forward to greet him as usual, "I hadn't expected to see you again!"

The sentry nudged him forward. Then the dogs moved to stand behind the chair, and the fully armoured individual moved to stand by the throne.

Alone, Papyrus took a faltering step. Then bowed in the way that monsters should do, lifting both hands to his soul and then his eyes. Offer loyalty to the king, who stood as representative of all of monster kind.

"Ah, there is no need to be so formal," murmured the king, eyebrows drawing together.

Papyrus rose out of the bow, to stand ramrod straight with his hands clasped in front of himself; and recalled the script that was beaten into him, "Thank you, your majesty. How can I serve the royal family?"

The king wilted a little, "Would you like some tea, my friend?"

"No thank you, your majesty."

The king sighed, and then sat cross legged on the ground before the single chair, ignoring the throne. "Please sit. We have some unpleasant business to talk through."

Papyrus sat. He sat ramrod straight with his hands clasped in his lap in front of himself, to try and hinder his shivering. It did not work.

The king mirrored him, clasping his own paws together, "There is no easy way to say this. You have been murdered."

Papyrus sucked in a breath through his teeth, too fast and too loud. No! They'd found him out?

No. No no, don't panic. Asgore used the word 'murdered'. And seemed to assume that Papyrus didn't know that he was dead.

Careful. Carefully craft the right tone of voice. Thankfully it was not hard to sound scared and confused. "I'm dead?"

"In all the ways that matter, yes, you are dead."

Okay. Okay okay okay. Papyrus needed two pieces of information. He could do this. He was a wily and cunning human taint, wasn't he? His hands shook. "Oh no! When did I die?"

"That is one of the things we are trying to work out," said Asgore, "How old are you, Papyrus?"

"Nine years old, there about," he said, "but Sans and I have only been underground for ah, six months, I think?"

There was another ripple through the crowd, and the perentie gasped, "Twenty years?"

He snapped to look at her, without meaning to, and she cringed. He quickly looked back to his knees. Twenty years was enough. That was a long enough time. Okay. Last piece.

He cleared his throat around the piece of glass still stuck in it, and allowed a wobble into his voice, "I...I was with Sans, I last remember. Is he-?"

And Asgore surged to his feet and rushed up to Papyrus, taking his tiny hands in his massive paws, "He is fine, my friend!" The king anxiously peered into Papyrus's face, trying desperately to convey this understanding, his kind heart absolutely shredded by the worry he assumed Papyrus must feel, "He has grown up, safe and well loved, he-"

And Papyrus laughed, once. A hard, sharp thing.

Asgore went silent immediately.

"I win," said Papyrus.

He hadn't really intend to say that bit aloud, after all, he wasn't proud of his deeply unhinged gamble. But the sheer relief was almost heady: he won! Sans lived, and lives and will live!! Nothing else matters!!!

The king continued to watch him, carefully, "Now what do you mean by that?"

"It means Sans is okay," Papyrus could hear his own voice, and he sounded giddy and weird.

The king nodded, "That is true. It is something that can be celebrated in this unfortunate situation. But we suspect, Papyrus, that you were killed by a shifter, precisely to feed on Sans."

"Yeah." Papyrus couldn't pretend anymore. It was probably sad news, and maybe he should be sad for himself, and he could already tell that the way he wasn't sad was making a lot of the crowd really uncomfortable, but he didn't care! Not even a little bit! "Sans is very lovable. Even a shifter could love him, easily." He rocked on the chair with a barely contained excitement. It had worked! No plan of his had ever worked before!!

Wow, he felt bad! The wool wrapping around his brain was getting thicker, and making it hard to pay attention to the words that were being spoken to him, and around him.

"hey majesty," said the remnant, "got a few questions for the kid."

"Oh no," said Asgore, stepping back to ceed the floor, "Did he lie?"

"worse."

The remnant dragged an office chair with him as he came, and then sat on it backwards, folding his arms over the backrest to gaze lazily at Papyrus. "hey." He looked and sounded very friendly, but that didn't detract from the raw hatred emanating from him.

"Hello," said Papyrus. He did not know this person, which made things tricky because he didn't know what style of talking to use with them. Did it even matter though, in the face of such abject antipathy? "Who are you?"

"i'm a sentry," said the remnant.

"Oh! A busybody," said Papyrus archly.

The remnant grinned, "ain't got no body, pal. and between you n me, i'm not all that busy either."

Papyrus hummed thoughtfully, "...so a lazy nobody?"

The remnant cracked up laughing. The hatred was briefly cut up by mirth, and afterwards simply didn't come back as strong as before. He must like laughing, Papyrus noted.

"ha, maybe." And then his smile dropt slightly, "but ah, you need to help us out here, kid. we're tryin to figure out when and how you were killed, and what we need to do about it."

And Papyrus did like helping people, though he was very bad at it. The glass shard in his throat slipped down to his chest, and began to burn. He rubbed at it absentmindedly as he tried to think. Ultimately, nothing mattered anymore, so he might as well, right? "Okay?"

"thanks! so, first question: how come you hate sentries?"

Papyrus went still. There was simply no way to answer that with being way too honest.

The remnant sighed and swung in his chair, "you gotta throw us a bone here-"

Papyrus smiled without meaning to, and added on: "No! You are a skeleton, you have your own bones to throw!"

"yeah yeah yeah, make no bones about it!"

"Oh my God, those are so bad!" Papyrus flapped a hand at him.

"would you say... bad to the b-"

"NO!" Papyrus lunged forward to hold up a hand, "IF I MADE ANY JOKES THEY WOULD BE BETTER JOKES!!"

At which point the remnant raised his brow as if to say, go on then! Show us the superior joking?

"I'll make a better joke to marrow," Papyrus said, a little bit proud of the pun.

"good one!" he winked. And then, "so, i can see you think i'm cool, which i am for sure, but why not the others?"

Right. Papyrus had almost forgotten that this was all an interrogation. So. So so so. Hating sentries. He sat back in his chair, crossing his legs on the seat to get more comfortable.

"I don't hate sentries," he began, "If I hated them, then I would be killing them, no? I merely dislike sentries." And the burning in his chest grew, his own body aching, pushing out the words that he'd never intended to say to anyone, "just like I dislike the royal guard. And the arbiters. And I dislike my classmates. And my foster parents. That's the way of human taint, isn't it? Ugly little creature filled with the echos of hate who can't help but be dissatisfied with every good thing given to them."

The remnant's grin went very stiff, before he forcefully relaxed it, "why were you talking to the arbiters?"

"To talk to the king." Papyrus's own smile twisted as he fought to not scowl. The anger was as strong as ever, even after twenty years of being dead. "They wouldn't let me."

"why not?"

He shrugged bitterly. "Who would you believe? The thing that came from a human with LOVE, or two of your trusted citizens who have kindly taken on two terrible burdens?" He breathed in, trying to get the better of himself. Oh? The ambient hatred was gone. It was quite completely replaced with horror.

"i would." The remnant's voice was quiet.

"What?"

"i would've believed you."

And he's telling the truth.

For a second Papyrus looked into a world where someone, anyone, had listened to him. Had believed him.

Look at that. He had some tears left after all. He thought he'd cried them all already. And wiped them away. "That's. That's nice," he said, "That's such a nice idea." He allowed himself to indulge in a full five seconds of wondering what it would've been like. Would he and Sans have gone to school together? Maybe they would've had a new home! Just the two of them.

It would've been nice.

"but it didn't happen that way," said the remnant, as if reading his mind.

"I wanted it to," said Papyrus. "I really did try." Why did it matter if remnant knew that? But it did matter, even now, especially now. Papyrus tried, really!

"i believe you," the sentry said. "sometimes you just... run out of trying."

Yeah. Papyrus had run out of trying, and also out of time.

"...Sans got sick," he admitted in a low voice, "And they wouldn't get him medicine."

The dogs growled, and Asgore made a dark sound like a twisting branch. Papyrus could taste the anger, much more than he could smell it, like chilli oil across the tongue and throat.

"so. you had a plan."

Papyrus nodded. "I'd heard about shifters. Everyone likes to tell scary stories about them, but if you talk to anyone who's actually met one they tell such interesting things!" He hadn't been able to read any of the books written about them so he'd had to talk and talk and talk, to anyone willing to share with him. "The rabbit lady at the Inn told me about the shifter they'd found in their village during the war, and it had protected them as they evacuated under the mountain before going into hiding again. See," and he gestured with both hands, "they don't want to get caught! They want to get along. And I talked to Gerson and he said," and here he leaned forward, "That shifters are like dragons and they hord their people. So you got," and he started counting on his fingers, "shape shifting, no need for food, very tough, very protective, and they live a long time. The ideal guardian!"

"barring the initial murder," said the remnant flatly.

"It's not-" he cut off at the glare the remnant levelled at him. It made him feel so incredibly guilty. Like it was the wrong thing to let himself be killed. "It doesn't matter!" he said stubbornly.

"and how do you think your brother feels, learnin that someone killed themselves for him."

Papyrus scoffed, "I'm sure he feels the same as all monsters do when they think about the six humans who've died for them."

"the humans are the one who put us underground-"

"And I'm the one who took Sans and then fell into a cursed mountain!" He clenched his hands, tighter tighter tighter, "They took his soul when he was six months old. I didn't know he was going to revive. I thought I killed him." He was shaking, shaken, hands in fists so tight it hurts. "I got him into this mess." The shaking got worse, and his bones shuddered, joints grinding. "I. I feel quite bad."

The remnant had gone an incredible shade of grey, "same." He ran a hand over his skull, as he stared into the void. "okay. um" then he spun on the chair and got up, "actually i'm done. i need to lie down." And he did exactly that, crumpling to the ground behind the throne, like a sick dog hiding away from predators. Papyrus wanted to go after him. But when he stood the ground swayed underneath him, and he crashed back into the chair.

Asgore flicked a hand. The dog sentries that led Papyrus here peeled away from their stations, and went to assist the remnant. Meanwhile Asgore himself steadied Papyrus, washing green magic over his shoulders and back. It dulled the burning, but not the fuzziness of his brain.

"Now my friend," the king said in his kind way, "finish your story. Sooner started sooner ended!"

"Okay," he said. What was he talking about? Dying? Shifters, that's right. "So I did all this research because I'd found a shifter-"

"YOU FOUND ONE?!!" the fully armoured individual yelled, making him AND the king jump, "You found a goddamn shifter and you DIDN'T TELL THE GUARD??!"

The vaguely rosemary ish smell around her tells him it's not a rhetorical question, mixed with the salty-spice of grief-and-guilt. For a the briefest moment, he thought about using that weakness, striking at the core of her sense of self by honing in on how she failed to protect.

But that seemed mean?

Instead, he yelled back! "It didn't want any trouble!" It was easy to yell, "It was at the bottom of a cave!! Kids would dare each other to go in and throw stones at it!!!"

He was breathing hard, and had to blink away a cloud of little black flecks that was crowding his vision. Was it hard to breath? The warmth made it hard to tell.

"It-" He panted, "You can. Tell a lot about someone from. From how they battle. This shifter. It would hide on the ceiling of the cave until people went away. So I talked to it. I said I wouldn't fight it-"

"And what if it had killed Sans?!" growled the royal guard.

"Stupid!" he rolled his eyes at her, "Sans only had me, and I wouldn't have loved it if it killed my only family. So it would've starved if it did that."

He was beginning to get dizzy, and he leant his head against the curved back of his chair. The vague warmth swallowed his whole torso and climbed his neck into his head.

There was a beeping. An alarm? And the yellow perentie took out her phone, "Five- five more minutes, everyone."

Asgore stood to his full height, "Do we have all the information we need?" he said to the crowd.

The rabbit shaped creature with the clipboard held up her paw, "We have records of royal fostering going back twenty years, yes?"

"We do."

"Then we do not need anything more to launch an investigation."

"Very good." And something about Asgore suddenly changed. Perhaps the way he held his shoulders, or lifted his head. But he was suddenly very large and very imposing, a king before his people, "To all others who are here today, you have heard."

"We have heard," the crowd echoed back.
"I render no judgement on this creature. No more than we render judgement on every monster who's freedom was bought with the death of the six humans. Do any disagree?"

There was silence.

"Are any dissatisfied?"

There was silence.

"Then, I dismiss this council."

All at once, the tension in the room was gone. The king himself sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "let me make you a cup of tea," he said to Papyrus, and then he went to stand in line behind all the dogs that had made a dive for the table before; because no one on earth cared that Asgore was a king when red velvet cupcakes were on the line.

There was nothing for Papyrus to do. Almost detached from his body, he watched as everyone had a drink and something to eat and talked among themselves. The two dog sentries got the remnant that had spoken to him to drink a cup of coffee and sit more comfortably in recliner that they dug out from a pile of furniture. The rabbit shaped lady rapidly gave instructions to three new monsters that had came in, and they left again in a hurry. More food was brought in. The light through the window changed from gold to pink. The whole room smelt different. The taste of salt and the smell of frying bread and melting butter. Sorrow, and relief, and determination to do right.

Papyrus swallowed. He would get up, but he couldn't. The warmth had spread throughout his whole body, so he couldn't tell where any of his limbs were. He blinked again. The black specks were swarming his whole vision. All of it. His soul shuddered in his chest. His breath rasped.

He was going to die.

It came to him suddenly. One plus one was two. Gravity pulled things down. He was going to die.

Oh. It was a good thing, then, that they all got to have this last conversation.

The remnant. No, the skeleton? He liked to be called a skeleton, Papyrus remembers that now. Sans had recovered enough by this time to stand again, and he came by the chair, watching Papyrus with a frown. "...you alright, my dude?"

And Papyrus sucked in a breath to reply.

And instead listed forward and vomited up a large quantity of blackish muck.

That's probably very bad, he thought as he fell sideways. His mind was pushed backwards into darkness before he could hit the floor.

Chapter Text

Undyne dropt the cup she was holding so it thudded on the carpet, as she dove for Papyrus. He hit the ground before she could snatch him out of the air, but she grabbed him before he could bounce; folding him to her chest in one movement as she began to heal him.

Sans swayed where he stood, all sounds muffled to his hearing. The last three days, in fact the last three hours, had been way too much for his soul to handle. The elation of surviving the soul maze, the desolation of discovering the shifter, the anger that burned him alive for two days afterwards as he and Alphys searched for a way to wrangle what happened from it, the revengeful glee when they found the ritual and how to crystallise truth, and then the whole fucking thing falling to pieces when Dogessa led in a goddamn child. A version of his brother that Sans had never seen before, not even in photos.

All of that, and the simple fact he had actually never known Papyrus. The first one called Papyrus. Was he upset about that? Or happy because it meant he wasn't a lump of trash that didn't noticed the murder of his bro? He wasn't sure. Somewhere during the interrogation his emotions had tuned off, and they hadn't come back online yet. Most of his energy had gone with it, he was in power saving mode like a phone at 5%, eyes and mind dim.

The carpet and chair are splattered with black. Three people surrounded Papyrus, the rest giving the first responders their space.

Sans startled as Alphys put a hand on his arm. She immediately jumped back and made a regretful 'so sorry I touched you' sort of air patting gesture, "S-sorry Sans. Could you p-please take all of us to the clinic? Time is of the essence."

Right. He shook his skull to try and sharpen his mind, before finding the door. There, just behind a pile of chairs. He took Alphys's hand, she took Undyne's, and he led them through; leaving them in the clinic.

There was immediately movement around Sans. Undyne laid the shifter in a bed as Alphys wheeled in a trolley. Things attached to machines were attached to fingers and arms, bags hung on an IV stand, monitors turned on to scan hp, soul pressure, and magic.

Sans bli nked.

The pink light of sunset was darkness now. He wad sitting on a chair in the corner of the shifter's room, out of the way, chilled to his soul. The curtains had been drawn, it was just him and the doppelganger in this little dark square.

The things that pulled him out of his daze were voices: Undyne, Alphys, and Asgore. Speaking softly on the other side of the curtains, their shadows dancing over the fabric like a puppet show.

"T-the green magic is the only thing holding him together, if-if-if we're really s-serious about keeping them alive I NEED more information."

Asgore made that low humming noise that meant he was thinking. "The young Papyrus mentioned QC and Gerson, who may know more. But more than that. We potentially have another shifter amongst the people."

"What?!" Undyne couldn't speak quietly, even when someone was dying two metres away from her, "Wouldn't there be some kind of sign? You know, smells. Kills. Suspicious wells of void energy."

"Um, well, the barrier w-would've masked the energy," said Alphys.

"And if they are well supplied with love," said Asgore, "killing would be unnecessary. Untidy, even. We cannot expect them to reveal themselves."

"You got that right," said Undyne ruefully, "why ruin a good thing you got going for you?"

"W-well, but they don't have to?" Alphys's voice squeaked, "Um, they shape shift. Just. Ask?"

"Very true, Dr Alphys," said Asgore, "There is indeed no need for the creature to break its disguise. I will make a public appeal, certainly, for any help under any circumstances, and then we will engineer a situation where the shifters privacy is maintained."

"T-tell them to come to the clinic," said Alphys, "I'll, I'll turn off all the cameras, the en-entire surveillance system. They can come and go with total secrecy."

"Will that be safe, Alph?" asked Undyne, voice low.

"W-well, YOU'LL be here, right?"

Undyne huffed, and Sans heard the scuff of shoes as the shadows on the curtain merged. "Yeah, I'll be here." said with such fondness that Sans felt like he was intruding.

After this, Asgore and Undyne left. Alphys puttered around; quietly talking herself through her to do list.

Sans... sat. He sat in his chair and he looked at the patch of moonlight on the tiles. And he wondered about his life. Wonder might be too strong of a word. He observed tile. It was square. Life can be square.

He was startled back to himself by Alphys, again, who pushed a face cloth and bucket with warm water into his hands, with gentle instructions to clean the shifter. If he was up to it, of of course! N-n-no pressure!

He didn't have any reason not to.

Sans wasn't really in a frame of mind to question whether or not he was 'up to' anything. Alphys's request prompted him to movement, mindlessly he did as he was bid.

There was bits of dried blackness stuck to Papyrus's face, that took a couple dabs to remove. The warm water was soon grey.

And.

And it was just his brother.

It was just Papyrus, lying there asleep. That was all Sans could see. Not some strange creature, not some imposter.

He put the bucket down, just under the bed. Then, utterly exhausted, he lay down next to his brother, and went to sleep.

<>

He was awoken by voices, and then the lights all turned on at once as Alphys, somewhere down the corridor, swiped all the switches in one movement.

She pulled back the curtain and led in a monster that Sans did not know because he'd literally never seen them before, a grey rabbit lady who met his gaze coldly. Behind her was Undyne, who moved into a corner to both loom dramatically and stay out of the way.

"Call me Belinda," said the rabbit.

"you don't look like a shifter," said Sans easily, as he sat up and scooted off the bed, "but you do look pretty shifty."

It's subtle, but there was a tenseness around her eyes, and the way her ears pricked and followed the sounds of first this person and then that person. She was acutely aware of where every single person in this room was, she was deeply afraid under her bluster. Still. She WAS here, when the easiest thing would to just not be. To just ignore their plea for help and stay at home, undiscovered.

She didn't answer him but went straight up to Papyrus, who she then examined carefully. She held a hand just over his face, without touching him. When nothing happened, she frowned, "Tsk, that's bad." She tapped his forehead. Then she fully shook him by the shoulders.

She stood back, baffled.

"share with the students, teach."

She startled. "He should be dead."

"Well, he's NOT," growled Undyne, "So tell us what the fuck is going on and then FIX IT."

The shifter scowled, matching her energy, "I am here only to repay my debt, monster." Then her shoulders sagged. "...I am no doctor. I have never studied the, the guts or health of my kind. So I am guessing here."

"T-that is f-fine," said Alphys, "Do your best."

The shifter licked her lips, and turned back to Papyrus, "A shifter's survival instinct is very strong, if he had any chance of recovering, he should've reacted to me." She waved her hand over his face, "Look at this. Nothing. Not a flinch or even a cringe." She lifted his arm and dropt it, and then gestures from him to herself, "He should be mauling me for this."

Something twinged in Sans, "i'll be mauling you if you don't cut that shit out."

She glanced at him, and then straightened. "Fair. However, give me two minutes before you rip my face off."

Then she took Papyrus's arm, and cracked it in two, neatly separating the forearm from the elbow. The invisible skin of magic that held those bones together tore, fraying blue. But where a monster would shed dust, there was instead: black. Long strings of black, like sticky melted cheese, strung from one bone to another.

"What the hell," whispered Undyne.

The shifter then lifted her paw, shifting it into jagged claws, which she dragging through the black. She paused. Everyone held their breath.

"Nothing," she said to herself, "Then we try this!" And she wrapped her claws around the bone and crushed it, tight!

Papyrus groaned, a half strangled sound, weakly twitching.

Undyne took two steps forward and lowered the point of a spear against the shifters throat. Who lifted her chin to meet her gaze fearlessly.

"I am testing to see how he is alive," said she. "I swear it."

Undyne glanced at Sans, who watched the shifter for a long moment before nodding. It was the truth.

Undyne stepped back.

The shifter rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders, and almost managed to hide her nerves from Sans. She was good. Too bad he was better.

And then she laid Papyrus's bones together again, and with a flash of green, healed the wound she gave him. Then she gestured to Sans, "Come here. He cannot think to eat in this state, but we will see if we can force some energy into him."

Sans did as he was bid, and let the shifter take his hand in her own, laying her other hand over Papyrus's soul.

"I want you to remember something from your past, a moment where you and this shifter were happy."

It wasn't easy to engage his brain against the exhausted grey that had covered him. But he thinks of. Of a few days ago. They had got ready for the festival together, Papyrus wearing the costume Sans had made. It always seemed like, the more fun Sans had with it, the more ridiculous the costume, the more eye catching and heavy to wear, the more Papyrus would love it. Sans never had the confidence or the stamina to wear them, but his brother! Man, Papyrus was so cool.

Hey, there's a sensation he's really quite used to! A sort of watery feeling just beyond his soul, half static and half cool. He was always feeling like this, around Papyrus.

"Excellent," hummed the shifter, her focus entirely somewhere else. She turned her head from Sans to Papyrus.

Nothing happened.

She tsked, and then pointed at Alphys. "Doctor, bring out his soul."

"What happened?"

The shifter paused. And then, grimacing, "this is about something that is an abomination to you. To monsters."

Alphys gave a shaky grin, "w-w-well, your among good company here. A-abominations all. Except for Sans. Probably!"

She nevertheless steeled herself, "...there are two kinds of food to a shifter. Secondary souces, which we graze from as necessary. And primary sources, which we consume continuously and instinctively."

Sans caught the shape of what she was trying to say, "he should've absorbed my emotion just now, awake or no."

"If he was alive in any capacity, yes. Exactly."

"but he is alive."

"Yes. I suspect he is..." she did not finish her sentence, "Doctor, the soul!"

Alphys jumped, and then hauled down the soul gram, a panel of magically treated glass through which the soul and other magical organs could be seen, without having to encounter.

It hung from the ceiling on a robotic arm, which automatically adjusts itself over Papyrus, just so, so they could all see.

Alphys flicked a switch and began to turn a dial, until, all at once, a heart was bizarrely imposed over the reality they saw through the glass...a normal monster's soul. Lv 1, 20 hp.

"How do you look through it?"

"Why would you want to?" Alphys began, and then at the shifters glare she scrambled, "ah, h-h-here is the dial for magnification, you just-"

The focus dipped below the monsters soul.

To another. A black soul, human side up. It was cracked into five pieces, that separated and then smashed back together. And separated. And smashed together.

Dead.

Sans grasped a fistful of hoodie, a hidden spasm.

Except, next to him, the shifter laughed once, "Of course he did. Concord." And she explained with being asked, "Our monster souls are subsumed and preserved outside of time, within us, a perfect echo of who they were at the moment of death. If you fuck up, and the monster sees you coming, then it is preserved in a moment of hatred. We call this discord, and it will weaken a shifter their whole life long. Now I," and she smiled with pride, "killed my monster before she even knew she was dying. This is called silence."

"But Papyrus let himself..." Undyne winced.

The shifter nods, "The first allowed the second to become him. Concord. I have only seen this once before!" Her eyes sparkled, "The black wyrm, two kingdom's to the west, you know of them?"

Undyne lifted her eyebrow, "We have a tenuous treaty with them, yeah. Wait." Her eye boggled, "They're a shifter?! Not a dragon??"

Belinda didn't hear, and instead pushed the soul gram out the way, "So! He is not dead because his monster's soul clings to life for his whole self. We therefore have a chance to restart that dead soul. How do you wake the fallen, doctor? When they've just fallen down, and there is a chance for them to rise again?"

Alphys froze for a second. And then, with quickness of an experienced professional, answered confidently, "Depends on the person. Sometimes, we shout things like: house is on fire! Or, you're late to work! It's stress that d-does it."

Belinda nodded. "Alright. Stress. I can make that happen."

Chapter Text

Sans was in danger.

He surged out of tar. Out of pitch black water. Everything that he had in him to attack the thing that attacked his brother; blood, soul, mind, all.

Immediately, it surrendered.

So He. Stopped?

He was stopped by an artificially instinctual mercy, a thing that'd been trained into him through years of battling with absolute restraint.

Instead of killing, he took a breath.

He knew this place. Alphys's lab. He stood on a bed, three blasters manifest around him with light in their throats, ready to fire at...a rabbit monster? No. It was a neat disguise, but like recognises like.

Lady Gerson. Why was she?

The thought cut off as he saw Sans, and Alphys, and Undyne, all around him. Scared. Probably?

What was?

Why. Was.

His head hurt.

The Lady knelt on the ground, her hands above her head. He could spare her, or not. She had made herself completely vulnerable to him. Her mistake.

Still. It would not be. Polite? To kill her. And he was. He had made himself. Polite.

He allowed the magic to fad, and sat down again. What was happening? Why was he here?

His vision was rapidly darkening, the edge of what he could see eaten up by wiggling black specks.

He heard Undyne yell...something, many things, he couldn't make out the words. There was the beeping of machines, something was strapped to his arm. He stared at the device. He knew what it was. What was it, again?

"Come Sans," said the Lady right by Papyrus's head, "As before." She touched his shoulder, and he tried to pull away from her. But she was quicker, her grip painfully tight, claws piercing into his bones. She held onto him.

His body filled with heaviness. Lady Gerson jerked him sideways, pulling him down, thud! To lie in the clinic bed. He tried to writhe away, a fading panic spurring him on. Why didn't he kill her. He should have.

When Sans lay across him, his brothers tiny full weight over Papyrus's sholders, rasping, "you gotta chill out, bro." Sans was shaking, "we're tryna help. but you gotta lie still."

That would kill him. Nevertheless, Papyrus stopped struggling.

"Huh," Lady Gerson laughed once, "can't accuse this one of cupboard love!" Her claws dug into his body, into the magic that held him together. He held still.

And the heaviness crushed him and all thinking into nothing.

<>

It was raining.

At first he was content to lie in his bed. It was warm, and comfortable, and smelt like home. He was safe.

Sans. Wait. The last time he was awake- the soul maze-

He surged forward, clawing his way out of the cocoon of blankets. He caught on a tube, and tore it out of himself as he threw himself out the doorway, heedless of the bin he knocked over or the way his shoulder smashed into the door frame. In the corridor he tripped on the carpet, fell hard, and rose again.

Where was everyone. Where was anyone. Anyone.

Frisk was coming up the stairs as he reached it, and they neatly walked into him, wrapping their arms around him in a hug.

He stopped struggling, and sagged to his knees. Frisk got themselves under him, folding him over their shoulder to hold him up.

Just behind them was Sans. He seemed healthy but.

Papyrus could not smell anything. Not joy, not sadness. Not even hate. That was impossible. Should be impossible. Even indifference, apathy, had its unique taste. There should be something. He breathed in, through both his nose and mouth: nothing.

He was emotion blind. Senseless.

Papyrus grappled with this mounting horror as Sans walked up to him.

"He torn out the IV," said Frisk, and Sans’s face crumpled in abject exhaustion.

His brother immediately took hold of his shoulder, and began to heal him. Despite the fact that Sans’s was awful at healing, and that it drained him terribly. "go get Toriel."

Frisk carefully set him down. Frisk ran.

There is no sense of emotion, even through touch. Even so, Papyrus was surprised to see how much he can tell just through his eye and ears. He hadn't realised he knew Sans so well.

The healing magic poured into him, and snagged in the way that it did when it had something to do. What was wrong? Papyrus turned his senses inwards.

He was dead.

There was nothing inside him. Not merely a lack of magic, but a lack of body and mind. His shifter body, that part of himself that ate and rested and created magic, was gone. As though he was cleaved in half. The only reason he did not die instantly where he stood is that his stolen soul and body was held together by the green magic that seeped into him.

He was going to die.

Sans laboured breathing next to him only confirmed this. His brother would exhaust himself, and then Papyrus would die.

"It's alright," he murmured into Sans’s shoulder. "Should've died long ago."

Sans made a snarling sound of frustration-

Just as Toriel ran up the stairs. She was a powerful healer, and Papyrus was thrown into the recovery position and glued together at max hp and then held down with one massive paw. There would be no more moving.

"thank you Tori," Sans wheezed, and then slumped over on the ground. He lay facing Papyrus.

Oh the floor underneath him was swaying like the deck of a ship, and even grew soft under his cheek bones. Comfortable. His vision began to go dark. But before he fainted he reached out to Sans. And he did mean to speak, to ask if his brother was okay. But he couldn't. The words were smothered. All he can do was look.

Sans understood, and smiled. A thin exhausted smile, "been better, bro." And then he grinned, "you'd think that nothing would get under my skin-"

Papyrus huffed.

"but i guess i've been pretty rattled!"

Not even almost dying could save him from the puns!! He scrunched his face to convey this, while Toriel laughed.

"Alright, Frisk must call Alphys. Meanwhile, we will get comfortable. Here." And she took a skeleton under each arm and walked back through Papyrus's room to his balcony to lay them on the comfy chairs that definitely had not been there before. Papyrus was not a cushiony chair sort of person, but the numb certainty of his approaching demise had him sitting without comment. The technically dead did not, he was fairly sure, quibble about the chairs they sat on.

Torial made sure to have a hand on him at all times, constantly healing him even as she settled herself comfortably to watch the rain.

<>

He awoke in his bed. It seemed to be early morning, the light through the window was pinkish orange.

He sat up, or tried to. The blankets tangled, his arms shuddered, and he fell back. Urgh. Gravity was stronger than it should be! Rude. Just turning over had him panting like that stupid tiny dog. Why weren't his lungs working?! His stolen body did the best it could, but it couldn't breath for all of him. That's what the extra dimensional gills were FOR.

It took a stupid long time for him to catch his breath. He then hauled himself up, and had to stop and catch his breath again.

Strange. He felt worse than. Um. He didn't remember. But he did feel more solid and grounded than maybe he had before? Possibly?

Checking his stats and body revealed something impossible: his shifters body was reviving. It was incredibly tiny, compared to the size he had attained before, but it was there. In his inventory, as it should be: enough black goop for a stomach and gut, but nothing else. No wonder he was struggling to breath, the little monster forme could barely keep up for two. He was going to have to move very slowly, till he had enough mass to form a gill or two.

He should hide.

The old instinct, to crawl into a cave somewhere and let the shadows cover him till he was strong enough to fight again, shuddered awake and started gnawing on his stolen soul. Hide. Flee. There were no allies, only clever enemies and if they knew his weakness they would kill him. Strike all who come near.

With the practice of twenty years, Papyrus held still through the panic. Animals bit without reasoning when they were injured. But he was not only an animal, he was also a monster. He was mannered and polite. He would NOT act on this flinch of his old understanding.

Papyrus carefully threaded his hands together and held them over his soul, as much as possible he refocused on his senses. On the sights and smells right before him. On the way his body felt.

Which was ah. Bad, actually.

He lay down again. There was absolutely no point in trying to get up. Or fleeing. He settled himself.

As he rolled his head on the pillow, he noticed a camera in the corner of his room.

That hurt. But, he would suggest nothing less if someone asked him how to house a shifter. And he had lied to them.

Frankly, he ought to be grateful that he got to stay in his own room, and not a cell under the main hall of Ebott Town.

The door opened, and Lady Gerson came in. She was a different forme to her usual one, a young blue bear, but he recognised her on sight.

Papyrus froze, no, he fought against freezing but failed, the desperate animal in him playing dead while his thinking mind tried to move.

She came to stand by the side of his bed. Following just behind her, was Sans. Who looked at him.

And Papyrus couldn't say anything.

The magnitude of everything was so much, that every possible opening sounded trite and insulting. Did he thank Sans for putting up with him? Shouldn't he start with asking how Sans was? But wouldn't that be sinister, given that he was Papyrus's primary food? But he should say something, right? He couldn't move his jaw. He tried.

He sounded like a very ill mouse.

Sans frowned, "is he awake?" as he pulled up a chair to sit next to Lady Gerson.

"He may or may not be coherent," she took Papyrus's left hand in her her right hand, and Sans’s right hand in her left.

"wow, that's such a useful answer!" Sans gave a shit eating grin as he leaned on the bed with his other arm.

She scowled at him, "Even if he was, he won't retain memory till he has enough mass to form a brain to remember with. Let us get on with it." And then closed her eyes. Sans did too, and they seemed to focus. They breathed in sync.

Oh. Huh. That was a weird feeling.

With the precision of a surgeon, the Lady extracted a measure of affection from Sans and intravenously dripped it into Papyrus. It felt incredibly strange, like cooled heat, or pressure without force, or moving while holding still. Like sliding. It pushed on him. Into.

He was. Urgh. Ow.

The room spun. He made a sound like a half strangled sob. For he was suddenly completely exhausted, beyond even words. It became harder to breath, the magic holding him together struggling to do that and hold his bones in place. His breath shuddered in, and out of him, wheezing.

"it looks painful."

"It is."

"is there anything we can do?"

"No. He must grow to survive, and he must eat to grow."

She got up to go and Sans did not. He stayed exactly where he was, holding Papyrus's arm, pulling out his phone to scroll.

"you know, you could probably work with the doc if you want to make a shifter anaesthetic. you obviously have bodies even if they made from voidy abyss stuff rather than energy or atoms."

"I risk too much as it is to be here, monster."

Papyrus blinked away tears. And even while the other shifter and his brother talked, his mind was clawed back into darkness.

<>

He could not breath.

He awoke labouring over it, panting, gulping just to lie still. Pins and needles ran up and down his body. He was smothering.

With a groan, he hauled himself out of containment, black gloop slurping free of his inventory, to form the gills. Feather tendrils waved into void space, in the nowhere that lies just under somewhere, even back into his own stolen inventory.

All at once, he had enough air. He could feel both his hearts beating, both his souls ringing, as he gasped in great breaths. The static pulled back and he could think again.

His breathing was still rough, he rasped from the phlegm built up in his shifters body. Coughed twice.

Sighing, he began to drop back into sleep.

"W-wow, you weren't kidding," said a voice by his side, "that used up like seventy percent of the regenerated mass!"

"This was the crucial moment," said the Lady.

Absolutely fucking not, why is she in his room?! He flung himself-

He did not move, could not. Neither of his bodies could; instead he just twitched, hand curling into a fist. Strength spent already, all endurance used up. He made a noise in the back of the throat he didn't have, snarl like.

"Shit, look at that!" Undyne loomed over him, he could feel the chill from her scales as she did, "he's going to get better now, right?"

"Well, he can eat and breath now. So it should be a straightforward process to regenerate the other organs." And Papyrus felt the bed dip as she leaned on it. "Runt." He cringed away from her, a tiny movement.

"mind your fucking mouth."

She laughed. "I should, shouldn't I? Papyrus. If you can hear me. It." And she turned sad, "It is a disgrace for another to defend your primary. Mine would have died that day, if you hadn't fought. For that, I am in your debt, and likely always will be. So, don't die. Or do. Do whatever you want."

She stood, and left, and the door clicked closed behind her.

"Defend. Primary," Alphys mumbled to herself as she scribbled, the sound of pen flying over cheap paper.

Something touched his head, and his whole body jerked away from it. He tried to open his eyes.

"Shh, you'll be alright," said Undyne, as she carefully brushed her claws over his skull, "we're all here."

He felt a diffuse warmness, inarticulate, that he absorbed on a whim. Emotion, certainly. But what kind? It had no taste, or perhaps he had no taste.

"Nyah! I can feel that! Sans, get over here!!"

And Undyne must've reached over to pull Sans over because-

Sans leaned against him, skull against skull, an armless hug, like he always did. Whatever Sans was feeling, it was a heavy emotion, like solid gold. It covered him like a mantle, and pinned him to the bed where he lay. The room began to spin.

"Hm," he tried to speak, and just made an inarticulate mumble. He swallowed.

"you can sleep bro. we got ya."

<>

Chapter Text

The sun was shining into his eyes. Just, a perfect beam of radiation straight into his sockets to paint light on the inside of his skull, hooly dooly that was so So SO bright.

He grumbled and shied away from it, turning over in his bed.

Which was warm and comfortable, and it smelt like the tea tree oil he used when he did the laundry.

He dozed for a little while longer, but slowly grew more and more awake. By the time the sun beam had moved from his face to the floor, he'd grown awake enough to sit up.

Looking up and around: it was definitely his room! However, his bed had been moved to the centre of it, surrounded by medical equipment. He recognised the thaum pulse meter linked to a screen, and the drip feeding green magic straight into his soul. There was a trolley with carefully labelled drawers, and his desk had been cleared off and set up with an autoclave and an ultraviolet light. There was a series of bins, one for sharps, and one for bio hazards, and one for general rubbish. And everything smelt faintly of bleach, under the tea tree.

He looked down. There was clear plastic over the floor, covering up his carpet.

Now Papyrus didn't like to judge or assume. But it seemed like something quite bad happened? To him?

He didn't feel bad though. No pain. Reasonable temperature. Tired, certainly, but not. Something?

He tried to remember.

There had been a soul maze. A terrifying thing made of strings and wind that twisted together into the vague shape of an ungulate, a super massive virus that consumed the souls of anything it could touch. It had borne down on them from the mountain, out of the core, a tornado of malice ripping through trees to the field where all the monsters were gathered for the festival.

He remembered facing it; the simple understanding that as a shifter, as a double bodied double minded creature, as one tethered to the void, he was the only one who could fight it with a chance of surviving.

Papyrus scrunched the quilt cover with his hands. That was it. That picture of it all: the grey sky over the green field, the soul maze looming over them. The people behind him.

And now he was here.

Well. Hm. He was here.

He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, careful to not yank out the IV tube that wound around his upper arm before disappearing under his shirt to, presumably, attach to his soul.

Oh, he hoped it stayed normal looking while he was being treated! If that mattered anymore. A soul maze. A thing to match even a shifter in strength. He would've had to use every trick he had to stop it. He remembers resolving to do exactly that.

He would've had to rapidly shift between a high determination form to alter the soul maze's magic circle, to a boss soul mimic to alter both his own and the maze's command over magic, to a human to attack with maximum disruption, to his own core form for healing, almost continuously healing, to maintain himself against the mazes feeding.

No one would've assume he was a monster afterwards. Or even a human.

He stood up and, taking the drip stand in one hand to tug it along with him on its wheeled stand, wandered to the door and out into the corridor.

Their house on the surface was very much like their house in Snowdin, only on a larger scale and with more rooms, on account of Toriel and Frisk living with them. Also plumbing in the human style, which involved not only a septic tank for the toilets, but several catchment tanks for rainwater and a very sophisticated filtration system. All very necessary, he was told, for sanitation and health. This did match the oldest most hazy memories he had gleaned from his host. Clean water, cleanliness in general, all very important for human health.

The rooms upstairs went thus: Frisk, Toriel, Sans, Papyrus. The stairs were on Papyrus’s side.

He attempted to gravity step, as he normally did, politely excusing himself from the earth's pull; and failed.

Well. Fail may be too strong of a word, as that implied that something started to happen and then that something didn't end the way it was intended to. But this was simply nothing. Nothing at all. No magic to fail.

He took stock of himself.

Ah. Well.

Well. These were grievous injuries. Attempting to do more than his body could handle at the moment would be very un great behaviour. Instead he would return to his room!

It was as he was entering the room that he caught sight of himself in the mirror hanging off the back of his door, and had a truly terrible fright: first forme! The body he stole as it was the day he stole it!! What happened to his alterations?!

Unconsciously, he reached out to his reflection, finger tips lightly brushing the glass.

He'd grown it so carefully to mimic an adult!!! Did you have idea how hard is was to get his hands on the necessary quantities of calcium??? Without looking like a crazy person??? He'd been hoarding pieces of chalk out the dump!!!

Small details that he hadn't noticed now jumped out at him: the shirt and gloves he wore were the right size for this first forme, and there, in the corner of the mirror behind him, he could see a motion detector bolted to the ceiling. Everyone absolutely knew he was a shifter.

Soul dropping, he tried to remember again, and again came up with nothing. Threading his fingers together steadied himself a little.

It's okay Papyrus, he thought to himself, you'll be alright. The worst is over, surely. The discovery was what he had truly been dreading, and that initial reaction. But, however bad he had thought it would go, it hadn't been that bad. He was still alive, for one. Hadn't been cast out of forme or home. Hadn't been poisoned by hate. He can even tell, from the feel of his blood, that he's eaten reasonably recently, so Sans was both okay and had been around him! All very good signs.

He shakily wiped away some sweat and tried to really believe it.

Well. No point on over dwelling on the future that may never happen! There were comfortable chairs with pretty blue cushions outside on the balcony, and he pulled some of the books he'd been meaning to read off his shelf and settled down to enjoy them.

It was. A little hard to enjoy them. Reading was tricky at the best of times, his good eye getting very tired over a whole day in the bright surface light. But now, post whatever the heck happened, he had to stop after a few minutes, closing the book and his eyes to lie still in the sun.

When he opened his eyes again, the sun was beginning to set.

In the room behind him, he heard the door opening and then a muffled cuss, and a "-uking keeps moving," and the sliding door of the balcony was slamed open so forcefully the whole frame rattled.

Toriel YELLED from downstairs, "Undyne!!"

"NYAH!!" Undyne yelled back, but she also closed the door much more softly, before flopping over into the other chair like a handful of spaghetti, arms and legs sprawling. She glanced at him, "You doing alright?"

Papyrus had frozen on that old instinct, gripping the book so tightly his knuckles hurt. Still, he smiled, "The great Papyrus is always alright." He couldn't manage his usual loudness, but who even needs volume? Confidence was in the Action, and he could flex the muscles he didn't have even while half dead.

Undyne's answering grin was all teeth, "Glad to hear it!" And she shoved his arm, "Don't die on me again!"

He threw a salute, hand shaking slightly. "Oh that is so annoying!" he grumbled. Stupid hands!

Undyne jumped in her seat, "Ah shit, wait!" And she pulled out a crumpled note, "Okay okay okay, have you spat up a shard of glass!?"

"Um, no-"

"Okay, are you struggling to breath?!"

"No, it's-"

"Are you hungry? Here-" And she grabbed one of his hands and waved it to and fro, "Chomp away, nerd. Can't have you sleeping beauty-ing on us again."

"Undyne, please hold on a moment, I can't just-"

"You can." And she made pointed eye contact. And held it.

He laughed nervously, "You seem very grimly determined here."

"Oh course I am!" And then she sat forward, dropping the bravado for a second, "I just want to help. Let me know how. You know I, uh, tend to rush into things."

"And get in over your head? Yes, you do do that, occasionally," he said, side eyeing her. "And then you stab it many times."

She pulled a face at him, "And I'm trying my best here-"

"Your best might suck, actually."

"Thank you for your honest feedback," she ground through grit teeth, "Can I get some regarding, like, hunger and stuff?!!"

She was his best friend. And he trusted her, trusted her to be her. So he took that risk: assumed she knew everything about him being a shifter, assumed she was also alright with like, all of it, and decided to try honesty.

"I could eat."

She waved her hand: go on then.

Alright. He could do this, he'd done it before. Just, not with someone who knew it was happening. Um.

He absorbed a chunk of. Something. Hey, hang on.

What the heck was going on with this stuff? There was an odd. Crunch? To the emotion. An unusual potency. It reminded him of that first moment when the barrier had broken and they'd all stepped through, and that first breath of air that hadn't been underground for five hundred years.

No lies. The power of emotion distilled by truth and understanding.

And yet, for the life of him, he couldn't tell what it was. He hadn't got his taste buds back yet, or his sense of smell.

Wowie, and it might still be the best thing he'd ever eaten! He unconsciously wiped away at stinging eye sockets as he grappled with his overwhelming relief.

"Hey! My dude are you alright?!" Undyne was suddenly hovering over him, hands lifted uselessly as she tried to think of something to help, "I'll call Toriel-" and she stood tall and took a deep breath to yell.

"I'm okay!" At her incredulous look, "No I really am okay!" Papyrus insisted, and he tried to rearrange his face to show it. "I'm happy we're still friends." His voice went a little faint on the last word. He wasn't all the way sure she considered him a friend, even after all this time. It still felt like such audacity, to claim anyone as a friend, let alone a best friend, let alone Undyne, who was the king's candidate.

Undyne looked down at him with a strange pinched expression, eyebrows drawing together. That was probably confusion. Damn, he was so bad at expressions.

"I didn't know if we would still be," he clarified. "Once. Once you knew I was a shifter."

Undyne's mouth twisted down and she half hid her face behind a shrug and gesture. "You too, nerd. Well. I mean. After everything that happened, I'm glad you still want to, uh. Be a monster and stuff. And our friend. After we didn't." Her voice drops, "After we didn't stand with you."

Ah, he knew what this was about! "It was a soul maze, Undyne," he said, with a bit of bluff and bluster, "Only the great Papyrus had the necessary skills to face such a foe!"

Huh?

Instead of matching his hype, or yelling about fighting, Undyne turned away completely. In fact she walked to the railing of the balcony and gripped it, knuckles turning pale.

"You know, Papyrus," she said quietly, "at least I did fight with you then." Her hair swayed with the breeze, "Do you remember what happened after?"

"No?"

Undyne hunched as though struck. "Shit." And then, "look, I. You know I'm bad at heart to heart stuff-"

"I commend your self understanding! One would require a heart for a heart to heart!"

"And- HEY! SHUT UP, ASSHOLE! TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE HUH?!"

At which point the conversation devolved into inelegant struggling as Undyne attempted to make him eat his words.

<>

Undyne took him downstairs, by tucking the IV stand under one arm, and him under the other, and jumping over the balcony railing.

She kicked open the living room door, so it bounced off the wall, "Good news! He remembers up to the festival!!"

Sans looked up from where he was couch rotting, "oh good."

"There was doubt about this?" said Papyrus, slightly hurt. "I have an impeccable memory!"

"Yeah, Alphys thought that maybe you'd lose all of em and only have the host memories!" said Undyne.

"That's not how that works!" he said, baffled. "They're not mine."

"Like a factory reset!" said she, as if she hadn't heard him, "And then you start speaking a weird shifter language!"

"Still not how it works!"

"How do shifters talk to each other, then?"

He squinted, "We mostly fight to the death. Otherwise we use chemicals?"

She clenched both hands, eyes wide, "Like ants!!"

"NOT LIKE ANTS!?"

"You have your separate territories, marked by shifter chemicals, and then when you meet, a clash!!"

That. Was unfortunately close to the truth. "...Maybe we are like ants."

His brother sniggered, "who could've ant-icipated this?"

"SANS."

"it ant-tirly an appropriate response."

"STOP IT."

"yeah yeah i hear ya. these jokes are a bit ant-ique."

"Undyne," he looked up at her from his awkward position, "If I have to listen to insect puns for the rest of my life because of you, I will never forgive you."

She grinned back, "Well, if you remember this conversation tomorrow, I'll apologise and everything."

He was going to hold her to that! He had a good memory!! "Now can you put me down?"

"Oh sorry," and she set him on the other side of the couch Sans was sitting on, careful not to tangle the IV.

Toriel leaned out of the kitchen, through the arched doorway, "Dinner in about twenty minutes. Papyrus my dear, do you want a plate?"

"Um, sure," he said, before he could really think about it. Wait, he didn't actually need food. Why did he say yes?!

Only Toriel had exactly the same kind of terrible humour as Sans, so she came out and handed him a plate, just by itself. It had flowers on the edge.

"Do you want food on the plate?" Toriel grinned.

Ha ha SO hilarious mom jokes were the height of hilarity. He sighed. Undyne snorted from the other side of the room, and Sans just smiled in his annoying way. He was surrounded!! By terrible jokers!! Even Frisk scrunched their nose in a Frisk smile from the kitchen. Nevertheless maintaining his dignity, he handed it back, "No thank you."

"But you will be joing us to eat?"

Toriel said it in such a friendly way, but he still felt a thrill of nerves.

"Yes, if that's alright."

"Of course it is, my dear."

<>

It seemed so strange to sit down at the table, with nothing in front of him. Thankfully there are a lot of people: Toriel and Frisk, Undyne and Alphys, Sans and also the annoying dog in a baby chair with a lil bowl in front of it. All crowded around the table, conversation flowing. He didn't have to do much or say much.

He had a very faint impression of the emotions now, a slight hint of jasmine and eucalyptus, like dried flowers left out in a corner of a room. He was careful to only graze the diffuse edges, to only absorb what had been completely felt already. The last thing he wanted to do was dull one of his friends, or render them emotionless. They'd recover, but. It was an unnecessary thing.

Sans leaned over, bumping his elbow into Papyrus, "Are you eating?"

His shoulders jumped, "Yes! Never fear!" Weird weird weird, he'd never get used to them knowing.

"you're a lot lighter than the other shifter," said Sans, chewing on stir fry. "i can barely feel you."

It was probably just an observation, right? Papyrus started tapping his fingers on his knee. Just conversation. Surly.

"Sans," he began, quietly enough to not be heard by the others.

"hm?"

"You know while I'm very great at most puzzles, I am ever so slightly less good at puzzle conversions."

"sure?"

"And. And right now my sense of taste is very limited."

"okay?"

"So was your comment just now, about being lighter than the other shifter, was that just a normal observation thing or was it a request thing?"

Sans turned to face him more, face rather blank.

Papyrus's nerve snapped, and he started whisper rambling, "Because I know it's a very unpleasant topic and all and I can try to eat in such a way that you can't feel anything. Or just, less. If you would like."

"i wish you would get angry at me."

He folded his hands together, under the table, "I don't know what you mean, Sans."

Sans shrugged, and then reached over and wrapped his hand around Papyrus's forearm. The contact made it much harder to moderate his absorption, he took a large chunk all at once, according to the body's need and not his thinking mind.

Sans rocked forward slightly, and then continued eating with one hand.

And Papyrus had to look away.

<>

Soon after dinner, he said goodnight and good bye to everyone, and then Sans took him to his room by way of a shortcut. He was grateful: there was no way he would've gotten up the stairs himself. Once again he pushed back on the urge to hide. Even though he felt deeply exposed and unsafe, he was sure he would sleep regardless. So it was unnecessary.

He felt too many unnecessary things.

Sans did not leave, but instead waited around while Papyrus got ready for bed, "we'll do a story, yeah?"

Papyrus got comfortable, then steeled himself, "I'd like that. Maybe tell me about what happened these last two weeks?"

"that's going to be hard" said Sans, voice quiet and very very even, "to be honest, i don't got what it takes to summarise the whole novel."

Wow, there was a truly disturbing amount of potential despair just behind that sentence. A flood, frozen solid mid wave. "I believe you," said Papyrus, and then he flicked his hand, "How about the study notes? The chapter titles?"

Sans sniggered, "i'll give ya the shitty one star review."

"As long as it actually says what's in the book and not just the vibes! I need at least three whole details!"

"heh yeah..." Sans sighed, "uh, long story short, after the fight you got arrested and we had a, what do you call 'em, where everyone involved comes together because it's unusual circumstances?"

"Group trial," said Papyrus.

"yeah, a group trial overseen by the king. and you're good to go, nothing to worry about there."

Papyrus blinked and tried to say something. Wow! He opened his mouth. He closed it again, teeth clacking together.

"yeah bro, you look like i felt the other day."

"Uh," Papyrus coughed into his elbow, "so kind of faint and feeling your life flash before your eyes??!"

Sans laughed, "yeah pretty much." Then Sans turned away and looked at the wall very hard. "But um, the method of trial. Killed ya."

Papyrus waited for Sans to elaborate.

He did not.

"Sans." He held both hands next to his face and attempted to keep the mood light, "I thought we agreed on at least one detail!"

"sure. we murdered you by crystallised truth."

Younger brothers! Sometimes he got really annoyed at Sans and his tendency to be as irritating as possible at moments of vulnerability. "I think you are exaggerating."

"i'm not-"

"Yes you are. I'm not dead, and you couldn't kill me if you wanted to, even now-"

"we made you eat-"

"Yes, a crystal," he flung his arms out, "What kind of crystal?! How did you make this miraculous substance that can kill even a shifter-"

"a core of 70% integrity and 30% justice, fused by plasma-"

"Which is like every laser crystal used in the core WHICH WOULD NEVER KILL ME!!! The magic isn't bio available!!! There's nothing for me to absorb-"

"you. liquefied." Sans snarled.

Oh. He understood.

Unfortunately, Sans had always been able to read him like an open book, and Papyrus must've done something. Moved some part of his face or twitched. And Sans noticed. And lunged forward, so they were face to face. "Papyrus. Tell me."

Alright. It is not as if this would change what happened. "It is not your fault."

Sans waited for his answer, silently.

"...The thing that kills shifters is hatred," he said. Specifically hatred from the primary. "It... Dissolves the bonds between our cells, much like it disrupts monsters to dust. If we ingest it."

But Sans didn't hate him. He would feel it, even if he couldn't taste it.

But Papyrus had never known Sans to stop hating the people that he hates. He was very consistent in that way.

Sans had raised a hand to his mouth, as he thought. "...and you eat instinctively."

"Only of a primary."

"and how many primarys do you have?"

"Just you." He could've made Flowey one, they spent enough time together. But the jumping timelines really mangled it all, and it was too exhausting to re do it every time everything started again.

Sans sat back. And then he sunk to the ground and lay his head against the bed. "...so i killed you."

It was strange to not taste the heavy grief he knew was filling the room. "And I killed your brother, twenty years ago. Maybe we're even."

Sans snorted wetly, "too soon, bro." He was obviously crying, but mostly had it under control as he climbed onto the bed again. "fuck. i hate this week. and last week too."

"I can only concure." Okay Papyrus. Be brave now. "After all this. Once I'm better. Do you still want me to stay?"

"yep."

"You didn't even think about it!"

"bro i'll be honest for once in my life," Sans lay face down, like gravity was twice as strong just for him, voice muffled by the bed cover, "these have been the worst two weeks of my life and if one of us is leaving, it's gonna be me. but if we're going to talk want. then i want to go back to normal, for you to recover as much as possible, and to never think about any of this again."

Well. He could work with that. There were alway lots of ways to find info about things they hadn't talked about, the king's office was very break-into-able!

"Alright, brother. But if you ever change your mind, we can have this conversation again."

"yeah sure," but from the way Sans said it, he didn't believe that time would ever come.

That's fine. If everything changed, or if nothing did; Papyrus would be happy with it.

Now. The whole mood had congealed under this conversation, cold and clammy and completely frozen over.

Papyrus fidgeted with his gloves. "Did I look cool as I was fighting the soul maze?"

Sans cracked up, "Papyrus, the coolest!"