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The human fiddles with their knife at the end of the hallway. Their nose is ever so slightly scrunched, and when they brush the dust off their striped shirt (a child, a human child, an anomaly) they seem displeased with the way the powder sticks to their hands. Sans tries to find it humorous, how disgusted they are with the consequences of their violence. He’s got a Killer one-liner, should it come up in conversation. But it’s not really funny. Not to him. And the less engaged the anomaly is, the better.
He knows himself, unfortunately. He knows that even though the goal, the whole deal-io is to bore them to tears, he doesn’t actually have the perfect poker face. He’s always been better at withdrawing. A laugh and a joke is great at putting other at ease, but that won’t help with this anomaly. Especially since he can’t fucking help himself sometimes. He sees something, his mind runs ahead of him, he says something. The more interesting he is, the more they want him. They want him dead, they want him alive, they want him reacting. He wants to curse the other Sanses out there, who keep convincing this thing to come back.
He didn’t know that was the game they were playing at the beginning. He hid in the shadows, withdrew, because that was what he knew and what he thought would take the heat off him and Papyrus. From both the new kid on the block, and the underground that found them a peculiar insertion to their lives. Then, other monsters weren’t the threat anymore. Then, he could see the human going down a path they wouldn’t like to see the end of (he thought). And then, he hesitated, Papyrus was gone, and there wasn’t a point in hiding anymore.
He didn’t really give that much of a shit about his life, life in the miserable, endless underground. But he still held back, because it was what he was used to. Maybe, he could say it was because he had the feeling. Sans was, somehow, important enough to the cruel universe to be one of the few people who could even posit that it was possible for… Alternate realities. Universes. Timelines. People in control, and people at the whims of that control. Destiny guiding your every step, and no point in fighting it. Prophecy, and extremely determined actors of fate. But he was also a miserable, lazy sack of shit who kept letting the world fuck him over because he just won’t act until it’s too late. Until the only option is to run.
The anomaly was still considering their dust. Sans felt the tension in his jaw, an old ache of grinding teeth and every time he had to make the active choice of release. Of easygoingness, passivity. His expression was blank by pure force.
“Sans, I’m trying to come up with something emotionally devastating to say, but frankly I’m just not that original,” the anomaly said, stalking towards him. Sans keeps his thoughts slow and measured. He thinks before he speaks. He doesn’t let a peep out that he hasn’t rolled over ten times.
“aw kid, don’t be so glum! i’m sure you're a real crowd-pleaser somewhere. got tons of fans out there, maybe even a whole fan club.” He sells it with a lazy wink. “oh, wait…”
“Speaking of unoriginal. You’ve made that exact joke before. ‘the big ten-o… blah, blah, blah.’” they mock. “‘you don’t have any friends.’” They bring their hands up to their face, wiggling their fingers. “Then the black-out scary eyes. Boo.”
He can tell they're leaving out context but that’s funny as hell. They are, in fact, a friendless loser. Because they killed everyone. “yeah kid, pretty sure i’ve never said that in my life. you must be thinking of a different guy.”
“A different guy,” they snort. “A different guy. Well, I’m paraphrasing.” Deadly steel swings towards him. He steps out the way breezily, and the magic of battle locks onto both of them. The adrenaline kicks in, and he can’t help himself from freestyling.
“paraphrasing? stop me if you’ve heard this one before. birds. bees maybe. something about trees? i dunno, something blooming.” He’s on a roll now, and he switches up his opener attack. It’s incredibly funny watching them trip over a platform that he knows has never, ever been there before. This is an incredibly original Sans Moment. A never-before-seen dunk.
And then reality sets in. He’s let the point fly over his head. He’s being too interesting. The script unfolds in his mind's eye, he gets back on track. Huh, always wondered why-
“Trees? Well, there isn’t a man here.” They seem almost overjoyed to blurt that one out, heaving with breath after his opening number. “Sorry, hehe, word association. Just rambling, it’s been a hot minute, and I never was really any good at this.”
‘Sorry.’
… He has to choose to ungrit his teeth again. Lots to think about with that one, and he has to let it all go. No thoughts, skull empty. He’s a statue.
“Sans, you might be happy to know that you have, in fact, won, by some metric. I have, never, ever beat you.” The anomaly… sits on the ground. They notice his slight dumbfoundedness at their audacity, and grin toothily. “Two can play at the not-taking-your-turn game, bucko. You’re stuck in here, with me. And I’m going to monologue at you. Monologue with every dumbass thought I’ve had across ten years.
"Yes, Sans. For ten years. You have been stuck here, in this hall, for ten years. The last time I genuinely tried to beat you, was ten years ago. Every once in a while I would think about you, the Judge standing at the end of an empty underground, and about how your only goal was to prevent The End. And about how I left you, alone, without anyone else, here, in the dark. Maybe it got darker even. Darker still! Phantasm. Friend in me. I don’t actually understand what’s going on there quite yet, won’t lie to you.
"Anyways, once in a while I’d remember about you, and your friends, and this sad little empty underground. And I’d think, Wow, That’s a real dick move of me. You probably wanted me, in your heart of hearts, to give up, and Reset. Sure, just preventing The End might be good enough, but, maybe, one version of you, you think, will never know how close I got, and he’d get to go fuck around on the surface. Maybe there’s a version of you out there, that the anomaly allows to smile with a little more heart in it. A little bit of truth.
"But no, I chose to leave you here. For A Decade. I meant to do it. I gave up, and left you here, and I thought it was funny.”
Sans closes his eyes, and makes snoring noises. He’s seething, and calculating, and he knows they probably know it too. But on the off chance they don't, performed boredom is guaranteed the best move. He doesn’t think he could perfectly pull off nonchalance at the moment. He feels the air change, the malice fueling magic, LOVE tainting the oxygen in the hall, and dodges as they swing their knife once again. Dodges, eyes still closed. He puts more into the snore, theatrical, before opening his eye with a rush of gold and blue magic and thrashing their technically mortal body into sharp bones. The anomaly is, unfortunately, getting better at dodging. Perhaps recalling a decade-old muscle memory. He expends magic until it makes his chest hurt to keep his turn going, and can’t fight the battle magic anymore.
It’s their turn. “The worst person in the world once told me to ‘Just let them go’. A tricky little fox-dog-god made him the worst person in the world specifically because of people like me, who have to suck all the enjoyment out of something. Leave no scraps, no stone unturned. Scrape all the marrow out of the bone, ‘Just because I could, I have to.’ At least he was literally soulless, poor kid can’t help it. Unfor-chu-met-ly for you,” they drawl syrupy sweet with a sickly smile, “the only way I know how to enjoy something is to obsess over it. It’s impossible to have mysteries nowadays… because of nosy people like meeeeeeeeee!'
“Sans.” They grin uncannily, manic with excitement. “Sans! Sansy. I only did this because of you. I’m really bad at dodging. I cheated my way through Undyne. I hated grinding through tens of monsters until dust filled my lungs. It’s gross! And boring! But this, this is the fun part. Seeing you, with The Scary Eyes. With the secrets revealed! A new side to the friend we thought we knew.”
“Sans, despite everything, is it still you?” they croon. Sunlight beams through the great stained-glass windows and casts deep shadows on their face. They seem extremely pleased with whatever reference they think they've dropped.
Sans sighs. “wow. that’s a whole lot of words. look, you clearly think you’re pretty clever, but…” They cheekily shake their head, violently whipping their hair side to side. “it just seems to me you love the sound of your own voice. here’s what i think. you are REALLY-”
“-Kind of a freak?” they say in unison. “Sans Undertale is ableist, you heard it here first.” They seem to realize something, and the corners of their mouth tug upwards. “I’m literally neurodivergent and a minor. You’re beefing with a child right now.”
“…i’m pretty sure this amount of bullshit counts as an Act.”
And magic agrees, allowing him to send enough razor-sharp bones to genuinely take their breath away. The jagged thicket erupts through the floor with a sickening crackling and creaking of bones. Bonus, it actually does something as they stumble backwards and poisoned blood weeps from their side.
“Fuck!” They grasp their darkening sweater, knees buckling slightly. “Fuck. Shit. Bitch. God, I know I was joking about the kid thing, but I do hope Frisk isn’t actually here. Not sure how this world works, and I’ve had enough of traumatizing my Vessels.” They bite into a steak and chew absentmindedly, and the green sparkles of healing magic hover gently around their wound.
“frisk...” He closes his eyes in thought. “that’s a real kid you’re shambling around with?” A pang of something, an emotion, thrums through his soul.
“I mean, maybe. It’s unclear. What, you genuinely thought a human child would just kill an entire race of people specifically to get a reaction out of you? No.” They shake their head to themselves, considering. “Or maybe you thought the name would be different…? Do we, perhaps, look similar to someone you once knew?”
Their smile goes soft, and terrible. “Or maybe it’s just the shirt,” they muse, their voice dropping to a casual, conversational hum. “Though, I suppose in general, you’re used to seeing stripes on a kid. But on a human… it’s a different color palette. Green and yellow.”
The faint, rhythmic shifting of his shoulders stops, and he can't help his eyelights fading out.
“You know, I spent some time walking around a town before I found this place,” the anomaly continues, tilting their head. “Nice place. Sunny. Lots of trees. There’s a quaint little grocery store with a green awning. The guy running it is real friendly. Real settled in. Has a nice house. A younger brother.”
The air in the long hallway goes completely dead. He can’t hear any birds chirping. The chill in his bones is heavy and magic curdles in his throat.
“Then one day, when the going got tough, they were gone. Things got dicey for a bit there…” They take another slow step forward, and performatively gesture slicing. “But for some reason that guy just didn’t have enough faith in the Powers That Be. Didn’t he know that they had an Angel on their side?
"Anyways. The coward ran away! And everyone missed him, and then moved on, and then forgot about him all together.
"And then I remembered you. Sitting here all these years. Unlucky, huh? That some other Sans, long, long ago, in a town, far, far away, is fucking you over today?”
The smugness radiates off of it. It don’t know jack shit. The anomaly is just shambling in the dark, but managing to get hits in by pure chance.
“...”
“...”
“...”
The silence is deafening as the judgment hall erupts into pure white light. Giant, draconic skulls tear through the fabric of the room, their jaws unhinging as massive beams of raw, blinding energy incinerate the space between them.
If it wants a reaction, well, sorry other Sanses, but he’s going to give it one.