Chapter Text
The smell of steak cooking on a clean stove hung tenderly in the air surrounding the kitchen, while onions and mushrooms could be heard being diced on a wooden cutting board.
“Hey Paps, Dinner’s almost ready!” Sans yelled while putting the chopped vegetation into the pan with the steaks. “Can you set the table?”
“Yeah, on my way.” Papyrus lazily yelled before his door squeaked open.
Soon, both were seated at the table peacefully, making banter while eating.
In the middle of papyrus saying something, there was an odd sounding knock at the door. Sans turned his head towards it, a bit taken aback by the strange rhythm. He glanced back at Papyrus for a moment, before getting up from the table.
“I’ll get it.” he said cheerfully, walking towards the door. Papyrus looked back down at the table, about to take another bite, when he heard a magic charge.
Papyrus whips his head around to Sans, surprised and confused, when he sees Sans has completely blocked the door with his bone attack. Through the gaps of each bone, hideous, rotting arms waved about, trying to grab at anything.
Both skeletons stare at this in shock, and one of these arms loses some of its flesh, the rotten viscera falling down onto the floor near Sans. He shakily turns his head to look at papyrus, absolutely horrified.
“I- I think they fell down…?” he says, his voice shaky and uncertain. Papyrus looks at the door for a moment longer, before he shakes his head slightly, forcing himself to snap out of it.
“We need to leave-” he starts, the fear in his voice audible “We need to go find Undyne.”
Papyrus puts his hand against the door, pushing on it. Sans gets the hint immediately, and moves the bone barrier back slowly, pushing the creatures away from the door. The moment the door is closed, Papyrus grabs the chair he was using, and roughly props it up underneath the doorknob, preventing the door from being opened normally.
Papyrus’s words finally register in Sans’s head, and he nods, still gazing fearfully at the door.
“Yeah- yeah, find Undyne- maybe she can fix them!” Sans looks over at papyrus while grabbing at his scarf anxiously. “There’s so many- I don't think we can leave through the door.”. He takes a step back towards papyrus.
“How many were there?” Papyrus asks, quickly walking to stand next to Sans
“I-I don’t know, I think more than 15?”. Papyrus turns his head away from sans, whispering something to himself somewhat angrily. He turns back to sans, about to say something, but Sans buts him off.
“We’ll go through the window in your room. Call her.” He says sternly, making a beeline for the stairs. Papyrus stands still for a moment, before following closely behind him and dialing Undyne’s number with shaky hands.
Once they reach Papyrus’s room, Sans pulls Papyrus in by the jacket, and shuts the door behind him, quickly barricading it with the mattress since that's one of the only things in the room that could possibly work. The phone continues to ring for a few seconds, when papyrus hears the line click.
“Undyne, it’s happened- sooner than expected- we need help!” he says into the phone urgently. Sans looks over at papyrus, confused.
“I-I know, I- uh- I’ve asked Queen Toriel to send a guard division over to snowdin-” static interrupts part of Undyne’s sentence. “They’re- they’re all coming in from the ruins.”. Papyrus takes a shaky breath.
“Okay, okay. What are we supposed to do until then, just hide?” He says, nervously fidgeting with the zipper on his jacket.
“Yes! Please, just hide! Alphys is on her way leading the guard,” Undyne agrees urgently. “she should be there in a half hour!”. Papyrus nearly recoils from the phone in shock
“A half hour?!” Papyrus partially shouts, before forcing himself to act calm “okay. Okay, a half hour.” he sighs anxiously, putting his face into his hand. “It could always be worse.”
"There's -uh- also something you should know.” Undyne starts “that- that virus, there’ve been a few of the infected over near the castle too, and they’ve shown mutations…” Papyrus nearly stops breathing upon hearing this.
“Mutations?” Papyrus chokes out
“they weren't anything like what the first few waves should be- it- it wasn’t rotting, but you could still tell it was one of them…” Undyne explains, her voice slightly wavering. Sans stares at Papyrus, completely shocked at how he’s acting like he knew this would happen.
“We don’t know if there are other mutations, so just stay as quiet as-”
The call drops before Undyne can finish her sentence. Papyrus stares down at the phone, taking it away from the side of his face.
“Fuck.” he angrily whisperd to himself, shoving his phone back into his jacket pocket.
“Why are you talking like this was supposed to happen…?” Sans speaks quietly, still shocked at what he heard papyrus saying. Papyrus looks at the floor near Sans, not able to make eye contact.
“And what did you mean by ‘mutation’? Monsters who fall down don't ‘mutate’ afterwards!” Sans exclaims, taking a couple steps towards papyrus.
“Look, I'll tell you everything I know once we’re safe, alright? All I can say right now is that those aren't fallen monsters, they’re undead humans.” Papyrus whispers, putting a finger to his mouth as a way to silently tell Sans to stay quiet. Sans stays silent for a few moments.
“Okay. okay.” He whispers, pretty hurt that his own brother would keep a secret like this in the first place. He sits down on the floor opposite from papyrus, crossing his legs.
Twenty minutes pass, and not a single word was spoken in that time. Most of the undead surrounding their house seem to have forgotten their presence now that the smell of steak has faded.
Sans looks at the clock behind papyrus for a moment, then out the window.
“You said 30 minutes, right?” he whispers, fidgeting with the rings on his gloves and glancing back over at papyrus, seeing him nod. Sans looks back at the floor, when someone letting out a harsh vocal frying sound is heard, sounding similar to a kind of clicking.
The sound continues, constantly moving, making it hard to determine where it's coming from
Sans whips his head around to the window, leaning forward on his knees, ready to take papyrus and run if anything jumped out at him.
“What is-” Sans whispered, being interrupted by papyrus putting a finger up and shushing him. He watched as Papyrus slowly and silently stepped towards the window, leaning forward to look down at the undead outside their house.
Click.
He saw no sign of Alphys’s division or any undead climbing up the house. He lets out a quiet breath, and glances back at sans. The first thing he can see is a mostly rotten undead, covered in mold, spores, and fungus growing out of its head and parts of its whole body, holding itself up on the roof above sans.
Click.
Both monsters are frozen in shock. Papyrus’s eyes hesitantly wander to the door, which is now opened, and the mattress is back on the floor.
Click.
A drop of thick blood falls onto the top of Sans’s skull, and he hesitantly turns his head around to look at what’s behind him, trembling.
Click. Click.
Its body is so rotten and infected with fungi, that some flesh follows after the drop of blood, landing directly onto Sans’s face. Instinctively, Sans summons a bone weapon, holding onto it tightly while still being too terrified to move.
The moment the weapon is summoned, the clicking stops, and the zombie tenses up, hissing spores threateningly. Before Sans or Papyrus can do anything, it drops itself off the roof, launching itself at Sans, tackling him to the floor.
Sans uses the weapon as a muzzle of sorts, holding it with both hands and forcing it between the creature’s jaws as it violently pushed down on it, trying to get to him. Sans does his best fighting against this thing, but it's already physically overpowering him despite falling apart.
Papyrus snaps out of shock, and tackles the infected, knocking it off of Sans by pure chance of having hit it at the right angle. However, it quickly breaks away from Papyrus, launching itself to the wall parallel to the two, using the wall as a springboard and lunging towards the two, only to be impaled by Sans’s bone attack coming through the floor.
The infected twitches violently, trying to break free from the attack. With his judgement clouded by adrenaline, Papyrus summons his blaster, aiming it at the infected and charging it up. Right before he can fire it, Sans grabs his wrist, prompting Papyrus to look at him.
Sans urgently puts a finger up to his mouth, reminding Papyrus how loud the blaster is when it's fired.
Papyrus looks between Sans and the zombie a few times, before exhaling shakily, getting rid of his blaster and summoning a bone attack from the roof to keep the zombie in place with a flick of the wrist.
He summons a single bone to hold, taking a single step towards the infected before Sans puts an arm out in front of him, stopping Papyrus from getting too close to it.
Sans looks back at the infected, summoning a final bone from the floor, impaling the creature’s head from the jaw to the top of the skull.
Unfortunately for them, this made it screech loud enough to crack glass, making both of them unintentionally get rid of all the bones keeping the zombie in place, hunch over, and cover their ears.
This lasts for a few seconds, before the infected chokes on its own decomposing throat, dying shortly after from its wounds. There is a long silence as the two try to process what had just happened, when they hear the front door getting broken open.
Sans shoves papyrus into the corner adjacent to the open bedroom door, then taking a stand in front of him, on guard. Papyrus summons his blaster again, knowing that shriek made it pointless for them to try and stay quiet. He shoves his way to Sans's side.
Heavy footsteps that sounded like cannons echo and reverberate through the walls, making the whole house quiver unsteadily. Papyrus glances over at sans, seeing him tremble. He looks up at his own hand, commanding the blaster, and sees himself shaking too. He takes a deep breath, slightly widening his stance, and this blaster begins charging to fire.
A zombie about 3x Papyrus’s height breaks through the doorframe, hitting its head on the roof, completely petrifying the brothers. Fear completely clouds both of their minds. Papyrus trembles so hard in fear you can hear his bones rattle, and Swap charges at the giant while screaming, a bone weapon in each hand.
The giant zombie sluggishly reaches for Sans's head, and in the nick of time, Papyrus violently grabs Sans by the scarf. He throws him back onto the floor away from the zombie, just for the giant to pick Papyrus up by the head instead, lifting him 3 feet off the floor.
Papyrus puts both his arms forward, activating his blaster at full power, aimed right at the zombie’s head. While the blaster is firing, Sans jumps up onto the arm that’s holding papyrus, desperately trying to stab it with the bones so the zombie will let him go.
No matter how hard sans hits the bones against the zombie’s arm, it can't even break the skin. Instead, the bones he was using as a weapon breaks beyond use.
Before sans can summon more, the zombie swings its arm, letting go of papyrus by accident in the process. This sends them practically flying to the wall with sans cushioning the blow for papyrus, hitting it so hard it cracks, and the force renders both of them unable to breathe for a few seconds.
The giant steps towards them as they both stumble over themselves, trying to get back up and breathe again. Papyrus’s eyes dart up to the giant’s head, which is completely unaffected by the blast.
As Sans successfully gets back on his feet and grabs Papyrus by the hood of his jacket, all Papyrus can do is stare up at his own demise in shock, which quickly melted into complete hopelessness.
Sans drags Papyrus away from the giant as fast as he can, each step it takes nearly making him fall over.
“GET UP! GET UP!!” He screams at Papyrus, desperately trying to get him to stand as he keeps dragging him, only for Papyrus to go completely limp.
“Go to Undyne.” Papyrus whispers just barely loud enough for Sans to hear him. The giant catches up to sans, and grabs papyrus by the face. Sans snaps his head up to the giant, silently pleading for it to let his little brother go; Even if that meant sans taking his place.
Instead, Sans is lifted off the ground along with Papyrus, refusing to let him go.
“STOP! STOP IT!” Sans screams, trying to pry the giant’s hands off of Papyrus’s head. The giant brings his other hand to Papyrus's neck and shoulders along with Sans’s waist and legs, and gripping them with such painful force that neither of them could move or even make a sound.
The giant jerks both its hands in opposite directions, snapping Papyrus’s head clean off.
It drops the two by accident, letting them fall to the floor as Papyrus’s head rolls back around to sans, ending up staring him in the eyes. Sans hugs Papyrus’s body tighter, never having let it go in the first place, and unable to process seeing his brother's severed head. The horror on his brother’s face as he turned to dust is something that will haunt Sans’s very soul forever.
Sans shakes uncontrollably, his bones rattling becoming something that could be heard from downstairs, staring at the dust all over him and on the floor. He hesitantly puts his hands to the floor, trying to pick up the dust.
“...Papyrus…?”
Sans shakily kept trying to gather Papyrus’s dust as the giant reached for his head next. Sans looks up, in complete shock and unable to process what's happening. Before sans knows it, the giant has a tight grip on his skull, only leaving a gap between its fingers for sans to see out of with one eye, and he is lifted into the air, most of the dust falling off of him.
Some loud voices are heard downstairs, speaking urgently, along with multiple fast paced footsteps. Sans’s eyes snap to the open door as Alphys rushes through, jumping at the giant with her axe, and hitting it dead on the base of the neck, breaking its upper spine and separating the brain’s control of the body.
The giant falls forward and on top of sans, nearly crushing him under the force of the fall and its weight, letting go of sans’s skull in the process, leaving sans to stare blankly at the ceiling, completely traumatized by everything that’s just happened in the span of just 5 minutes.
Alphys pants heavily in the doorway, catching her breath, and bringing a watch on her wrist up to her jaw, shaking her wrist twice in a very deliberate manner to activate the radio.
“d-did anybody find sans and papyrus? Undyne says they didn't leave the house.” She says, regaining her breath.
“not yet, we’ll search the house.”
“Good.” she answers, bringing her arm down to her side and taking a deep breath, shaking her wrist twice again to shut the radio off. She turns her head to examine the room, but the first thing she sees is dust scattered all over the walls and floor. She nearly chokes on air upon seeing this.
She hesitantly approaches it, a lump forming in her throat and tears beginning to sting her eyes.
“s…sans? Papyrus?” she chokes out, taking a few steps towards the dust piles, and Sans suddenly grabs her ankle, making her gasp and instinctively point her axe at him.
The moment she registers the fact that its sans under the giant, she puts her axe down on the floor nearby, getting on her knees and pulling sans out from underneath the zombie.
All Sans can do in the moment is hold onto her arm so tightly it hurts her a little. Alphys looks over at the dust pile again, realizing its papyrus who dusted. She turns her head away, stifling any noise and trying to stay calm.
She helps Sans up, putting his arm over her shoulder and walking him out of the room, bringing her free hand up to her jaw again
“Cancel the search. I’ve found sans.” Alphys chokes out, trying not to cry.
“What about Papyrus?” a concerned voice comes through her watch. Alphys stifles the urge to break down and cry, trying to sound as clear as possible.
“...He didn't make it.”. Sans looks over at Alphys, not processing much of anything that’s happened.
“no- no we need to go back- he’s hurt.” he says quietly, trying to get away from Alphys, but she holds onto his arm and waist tighter, knowing Papyrus is beyond saving. “we can still save him!”
Alphys looks down at Sans, almost pitying him for his denial, but feeling too much grief herself to do so.
“he hit his head, he can't fight by himself.” Sans continued, as Alphys continued stopping his weak attempts at running back to that room.
“N-no. Sans, he turned to dust. I'm sorry.” she whispers, walking him down the stairs with her, meeting back with her division downstairs. They all leave the house, hurrying back to the castle, reuniting with other guard divisions as they go, taking all survivors with them.
At the castle, after all survivors had been taken to the hospital wing, Alphys approaches Queen Toriel’s chamber, opening the door just a sliver to peek her head in.
“y-your majesty…?” Alphys stutters, not wanting to tell the queen what’s happened, but knowing nobody else will. Toriel perks up when she hears Alphys, rushing over to her.
“Oh, Alphys, thank goodness!” she says, relief audible in her voice as she opens the door, hugging Alphys tightly. Alphys feels even guiltier for what she’s about to tell her.
After a few moments, Toriel lets go of Alphys, keeping her hands on her shoulders.
“How did it go? Is anybody hurt?”
Alphys avoids eye contact, trying to find the right words to explain. The silence hangs heavy in the air, making Toriel's grip on Alphys’s shoulders tighten just a little.
“Alphys, please.” she says quietly, afraid of what she’ll hear.
“3 casualties found.” Alphys says, trying to keep her voice firm, while avoiding eye contact. Toriel lets go of her shoulders, taking a step back, and burying her face into her hands.
“Oh my god.” she whimpers, holding back sobs. Silence once again eats away at both of them for a while, before Toriel uncovers her face, wiping away tears.
“...Who were they?” Toriel asks, her voice breaking. Alphys hesitates, before telling her what she knows
“I don’t know who the other two are yet, they were counted for by the other divisions…” she starts, starting to fail at keeping her voice firm, the grief getting to her “but the one I found dead was papyrus.”
Toriel covers her mouth in shock, tears falling down her face again. She hunches over, trying to stifle her sobs but failing. Alphys isn't sure what to do to comfort the queen right now, and all she can think of is to hug her. She gently brings her arms up to Toriel, beginning to tear up too, and gently hugs her.
As this is happening, Undyne is running down the corridor towards the hospital wing, swinging the door open the moment she can reach it, and halting in the doorway, scanning the room.
She spots sans at the back of the room, next to a window. She hesitates for a moment, before quietly walking to his bed, careful not to disturb all the other patients there as medical staff worked on treating their injuries
Undyne stops at the side of Sans’s bed, staring down at Sans, concerned but tired. She’s been trying to keep working while processing the fact that one of her best friends is now dead.
Sans sluggishly turns his head to look up at Undyne, still in a traumatic shock state. His memories of what happened were becoming clearer, but they were still muddled and mixed together. He remembers Papyrus talking to undyne, and mentioning her.
“What did you do?” he says quietly, blaming her for Papyrus’s death in his own head. This question surprises Undyne, making her feel guiltier, given she was already blaming herself for this.
“I…I didn’t do this.” she quietly insists, shaking her head softly “I wanted him to live.” tears form in her eyes, and she quickly wipes them away, not wanting to cry in front of dozens of monsters.
Sans just stares at her blankly, before turning away from her and laying on his side, never changing his expression. Undyne almost reaches out to stop him, wanting him to know that she’s not at fault here and is grieving him too, but stops just short of grabbing Sans's shoulder.
She folds her hands tightly, pulling them back near her torso, and walks back to the door, reminding herself that neither of them are in their right minds at the moment.
She doesn't want to risk saying anything she would regret later, and figures it's best if she gets back to work on helping the queen form a plan to take the underground back from the undead.
She opens the door to the corridors, glancing back at all the monsters in the hospital wing, before quietly shutting it behind her.