Work Text:
The tall skeleton in the orange hoodie kept trying to talk to him.
Blue was usually happy to talk to anybody in the Omega Timeline! There were so many people and so many potential friends, some of them even listened to him! Sure, some ran away, or called him names, or got scared, but some didn't!
But that orange hoodie sent him running. He would catch a glimpse of it across the plaza and a wave of emotions too strong to understand crashed down and made him leave. He didn't want to talk to the skeleton in the orange hoodie. (He really wanted to talk to the skeleton in the orange hoodie.)
"Please-"
"La la la! Oh stars, who is singing at a time like this? I can't hear you, sorry!" Blue ran into the forest, but the skeleton wasn't letting him go.
"C'mon, just- can't we talk? Please?" There was raw emotion in that voice (Unfamiliar- So familiar it made his ribcage ache) and he couldn't take it. Blue didn't turn around to look at his pursuer.
He shouldn't be seen like this. Not by him. Not like this. Never again.
(A foggy and glitchy memory of him trying to talk to the tall skeleton in the orange hoodie after a long, long time alone in the anti-void. Of a disgusted face. Being spurned. Being called a liar, being disbelieved. Trying to touch him, begging, and then he took two steps back. The SOUL Sans barely held onto shattering. Realizing things could never be the same again.)
"Blue, please! How was I supposed to know? I thought you were dead!"
Blue kept going, closing his sockets, the glitching following him even then. His bones felt like static. This part of the forest was snowy.
(Just like his home. His home was gone. He'd never had a home, only the vast empty whiteness. He'd never had anything. There was nothing before he was this.)
"Sans!"
Blue tripped and fell. He sprawled onto his hands and knees, and the reality of his body broke around him. He couldn't move. His bones were all out of place. His ears rang.
"Please. You're my brother-"
"STOP! Stop it, that's not funny!" Blue cried, fingers curling into the snow. "I thought you were supposed to be funny? Why are you hurting me?"
"I'm... Blue, please..."
When his body could move again, Blue looked up to see the tall skeleton in the orange hoodie kneeling in front of him. His sockets were creased in worry, confusion, concern. He was holding out a hand like he'd intended to do something but hadn't quite made it.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry for... before. I didn't know."
"D-Didn't know, didn't want to know, didn't c- didn't care-" Blue lowered his head and bit down on the tears. "It's okay! There's nothing to know. There's nobody to know..."
"I know you."
"No you do not! And I don't know you! I don't know you!" Blue let himself fall into the snow, grabbed the back of his skull in his hands, tried to suppress it all down again. He couldn't have this. He didn't deserve a happy ending anymore. "I-I don't know you!"
"I'm your brother.”
“No! No, I don’t know you!” Blue was alone. He'd been left all alone, forever, and he couldn't go back. Didn't the skeleton in the hoodie know that? Couldn't he see the broken images, the blackened glitches, the strange colors? "I was wrong before, I don't know you. I don't."
“Look, I... I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I fucked up.”
"Language, Papy-"
Blue froze. The words had come from somewhere inside of him that he had no control over. He should have been used to that by now, but with them came all the memories he didn't want to have anymore.
The tall skeleton in the... the orange... no. His brother. His brother put a hand on his back and rubbed up and down, slowly. The contact was too much (he needed it. He needed it so bad. He was falling apart.)
"I'm sorry," Papyrus repeated. Gentle hands helped Blue sit up, and he saw the tears falling from his brother's sockets. "I'm here, now."
"Everything's different. I'm not the same." Blue pulled away from the touch and glared at his gradient bones. "I'm not your brother anymore."
"Bullshit, bro. You just yelled at me for swearing."
Blue looked up at his brother. His brother. His brother, who was talking to him, and being kind. Stretch was here, and he was looking at him like he was okay.
(Maybe, that day that Blue came back... maybe Papyrus had been scared, too. Too scared to realize Blue was his brother, too comforted by the grief to put himself through living again.)
"Are you scared of me?" Blue asked.
Papyrus shook his head. "I know you're not dangerous. You're not like him."
"I am. Can't you s-see that?"
"I just see you."
Blue laughed. He was crying. "Then you need glasses! A big round pair of glasses!"
Papyrus smiled uncertainly. "Nah, I'd get a cool pointy pair of anime shades."
"Mweh heh! Heh! You w-would look like such a nerd!" Blue didn't know why he was laughing so hard, or why the tears wouldn't stop.
His brother grabbed him around the middle and buried his head in Blue's bandana. His thin frame was wracked with sobs as he held onto Blue with a staggering ferocity.
"I missed you so much. I'm so sorry."
It'd been so long since he'd been touched. Since he'd been hugged. Since he'd let himself think that his brother could ever see him like this and not run away in fear, disgust, shame. Since he'd let himself think he had a brother at all.
Blue had a brother. His brother was hugging him. His brother saw him.
He wasn't alone anymore.