So, Rain was back. And she was doing one hell of a job ringing true to the saying “be careful what you wish for.” She was a more than adequate shield against the pain but other than that she was being a proper horror to deal with.

That was ok though. Chara had expected her to get her second wind somewhere near the end. She must like the dramatic effect of a last stand, just like her bonely little friend across the hall. But she would eventually tire herself out again like she always did. Sans certainly wasn’t helping her case either. The agonizingly long, crule deaths were wearing Rain down faster than they were frustrating Chara. Once she was properly broken again Chara would have all the advantages of her unwilling teammate without having to deal with all the fighting and squirming she was putting up with now.

“friendship is really great, huh?” Sans chimed in, dogging two swings and dancing back out of reach, a wall of bone rising up and forcing her to retreat back a few steps. Even with Rain pestering her she was still making great progress. He was trying to hide his heavy breathing but the glisten of sweat on his skull told the truth of his position. “let’s stop fighting.” He held out his arms in an open gesture of peace, sweat trickling down the sides of his face. He couldn’t even bother to make himself sound convincing anymore.

As always Chara took this moment to heal and catch her breath. No doubt he was doing the same.

All of a sudden she lost control of her arm. She looked up in surprise and watched the rouge limb toss her weapon far across the hall, sending it bouncing against the stone and ringing against the walls.

Ah. Rain had just revealed her grand plan.

Chara sighed in exasperation, eyes darting between her lost weapons and Sans, who still had his arms held out and a look of surprise painted on his face.

“Really? Really? This is what you woke up to do? You have resorted to throwing things again?” She chided.

Well, she still had her knife.

Upon remembering this, her other arm tossed that aside too.

Chara threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. “Fine! You know what? We have all been through this before. We both know what happens next, so here. You get to enjoy this by yourself.” She took Rain by the scruff and shoved her up front.

Rain blinked in surprised and stumbled forward a step. That had been easier than she had expected.

She worked her mouth, having to get used to the feeling of speaking aloud again after having suffered through several months of resets in silence. It felt weird after having been in the dream for so long. Her own tongue and teeth felt unfamiliar to her. “I uh, I did not expect that to work so well on the first try.” She admitted with a sheepish laughed, hunched over and hugging herself.

Sans’s arms lowered a bit in disbelief. “you… uh, you are really sparing me?”

She nodded, wobbling forward, focusing on mending her flesh. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re spared. Listen, I don’t know how much time I have left but I need your help.”

He sighed in relief. “finally. buddy, you have no idea how relived i am that i finally got through to you. c’mere.”

She frowned. Those words rang familiar. She looked up, eyes going wide, hands held out in front of her. “No, wait! Sans! Don’t!”

Ribs arced up from the floor, running her through and pinning her down in a rapidly growing pool of her own blood. There was no one there to dull her pain as it came. She cried out, choked sobs tasting like blood as the barbed bone shifted, tearing into her flesh inch by inch. Every nerve in her body begged her to flee back into the dream and let Chara reset but she couldn’t let go just yet. She couldn’t let this moment of control get away from her. “You need to help me.” She rasped in desperation. “She keeps it so cloudy... I need new eyes to see”

He didn’t seem to hear her. Her voice was too quiet and broken. He was rubbing a hand over his face, his expression strange and conflicted; a maddening sort of emptiness floating around in his sockets as he giggled. “wow! i’m surprised that worked this far into the game!” He covered his mouth and looked away, stepping around her but not quite looking at the carnage he had wrought as he laughed. “hah! wow. You must think I’m really stupid huh? this is rich. hilarious. i mean, come on, this late in the game how could i not know that this was just a new angle for you?” He shook his head, tired eyes closing as he took a few agonizingly long moments to compose himself while she continued to try and spit out some sort of sentence that would grab his attention.

It didn’t work. They both just sat and listen to his stressed out little chuckles and her bloody whimpering.

He cut off his laughter in an abrupt manner and straightened himself. “welp, anyway, back to suffering.” He took a deep breath and raised his hand, summoning a new row of bones to finish her off. “geeett dunked on!

Pain.

Darkness.

Reset.

***

She wasn’t always able to get her brief moment of mercy. Chara kept an iron grip on her weapons for the most part but every once in a while she managed to catch her off guard and disarm her, causing her to back off in frustration and let Rain say her piece.

She floundered with her words. It had been a while since she had been able to freely speak for any length of time. Even when she was given the chance to talk, Chara remained a dark fog bearing down on her thoughts as she tried to form them.

“Sans, help me.”

Reset.

“Sans, please, stop!”

Reset.

“Wait!”

Reset!

One after another her attempts fell on deaf ears; each death weakening her a little more and threatening to toss her back into that long dark tunnel that faded out into dreams.

She had to space out the attempts, allowing Chara to progress farther and farther on her own. Yet even though she allowed herself to bend she did not break. She soon found new ways to fight back against her that required less energy.

When Chara would sing her song Rain would sing along out of sync or out of tune. Or she would even re-invent Chara’s macabre lyrics and distract her with the new words.

“what’s a’ matter rain? looks like you are slowing down.” Sans taunted, dogging from side to side then reappearing somewhere else. “sins weighing ya down? starting to feel them crawling on your back? hanging from your neck?”

Chara shambled after him, breathing uneven as she dodged the attacks and flung herself behind a pillar to avoid a rather nasty blast from one of his monstrous skulls. She was bleeding profusely from every little cut and scrape she had sustained.

“Shut up. It will pass.” She snapped.

“you sure are bleeding a lot, huh? wonder why.” He shrugged, sidestepping his own attack and catching her in the chest as she tried to hit him. “just karma, i guess.”

Rain smiled somewhere deep inside the fog, pressing up against the growing list of wounds and protecting them from Chara’s attempts to heal them. She allowed them to tear open all the wider with every movement, carefully protecting them and coaxing them to grow like the feeble embers of a fire being brought back to life. “Yes, karma. I guess you could say that.”

***

Thirty seconds. That was his rough estimate. Thirty seconds between the soul dispersing and the human reloading to the start of the fight again. Thirty seconds where he thought that maybe this time, finally, she would stop. She would give up.

The thought persisted for a few brief seconds after he was pulled back to his original starting point. One moment he would be staring at the bloody, demolished pillars of the final room and the next he would find himself standing under the pristine, polished archways of the untarnished hall, alone once more. Then he would hear her approaching footsteps at the other end of the room and he would know what awaited him.

ah, of course. who was i kidding?

Then he wouldn’t know exactly why he had thought that. He could not remember what he had been thinking just a moment ago. The image of the bloody halls slipped his mind. He only knew that this was not the first time he had done this. It wasn’t the second, the third, or fiftieth... or the hundredth.

All he knew was that he had thirty seconds.

thirty seconds for what? Hell if he knew.

Then he would fight and he would fight and he would fight. Sometimes spilling out lines that he thought may be new only to hear them echo around inside his head in a sense of de ja vu that soon solidified into true familiarity after he had finished speaking.

He would doge and he would doge and he would doge. Growing more and more tired with each narrow escape; his mind becoming more and more weary with every swipe that missed. And then finally, at long last, he would somehow catch her. He would catch her and he would pin her down and make her bleed. He would make her suffer. He would make her pay.

Part of him was still angry about all this. But the anomaly had been messing with his timeline for so long now that even the true resets were not enough to fully wipe away the afterimages she had left behind- and being able to remember glimpses of all the times he had succeeded only to have his victory reset made it hard to keep trying.

Forgetting had been a mercy.

He knew just enough to know that none of this mattered to her. The deaths, the pain, the time lost- all of it was unimportant in her methodical rampage. It made the loss of his friends and family feel dull and distant. How many times had she killed them? How many times had he gotten them back? He could not decide if he welcomed or feared this dullness in his chest whenever it happened to manifest itself.

Was this madness?

But now she was saying that this time they would all be dead for good if he let her pass. If she got past him there would be no more resets and as much as he hated them, at least a new reset meant a fresh start. A second chance. So he couldn’t afford not to care anymore. He had to try for their sake- right?

Still, it was hard to give it his all.

He caught his breath while she bled out a few feet away.

Sometimes he enjoyed doing it.

Sometimes he just felt empty.

Sometimes he laughed.

Sometimes he couldn’t remember how to laugh at all.

But eventually, no matter how drawn out he made it, she would die and her soul would shatter. Its light would disperse in an act of evasion too fast for him to ever hope to catch. Then he would stand and wait, wondering if maybe this time she would finally quit.

Nothing would happen for a while. The room would be quiet. He would count the seconds as they passed, a little glimmer of hope rising up inside of him.

Then he would remember and finally understand what he had been thinking when she had first stepped into the hall: thirty seconds.

And right on the mark, he would be pulled back; vowing to remember this time and feeling a little glimmer of hope when he succeeded for the first few seconds of the reset. Then it would all fade back into a nagging shadow in the back of his mind and he would hear her entering the hall.

So he fought on, again and again, until something strange started to happen.

Despite knowing that by now he had probably already fooled her with his little trick, he still offered her mercy. Truly he did not want to. The lie stuck up against the roof of his mouth like mud when he tried to spit it out. Just the thought of forgiving her after all this made him feel sick. But he was getting tired and needed a moment to catch his breath. Surely it would at least make her pause for a second, right?

He was completely taken off guard when she tossed her weapons aside.

His sockets widened a bit in surprise. Had he really not offered this before? No, no he could still feel that faint feeling of de ja vu floating around in his head telling him that he had. But maybe this was the first time she had thought to take him up on the offer?

“you are sparing me?” The words sounded strange coming from his mouth. His body remained tense, ready to move out of the way at the slightest indication of aggression. She had just discarded a hidden knife he had known nothing about, who was to say she didn’t have something else hidden up her sleeve?

She nodded, looking winded. A curtain of loose ashen hairs framed her face like a macabre veil.

His smile twitched, a single note of laughter wheezing out like a sigh as he held out his arms. “finally. buddy, you have no idea how glad i am to hear that. c’mere.”

He would catch her in the back when her guard was down. He wasn’t proud of backstabbing but at this point she deserved it. It’s not like she meant it when she said she wanted peace. After all she had done there was no way she could have a real change of heart this close to the end.

“I want to be good again.” She murmured, catching him off guard. “I need your help. I just need help. I need to find…something.” She was limping towards him. She looked thin and weak but still the movements sent his soul racing with panic. She was getting closer, eyes downcast and shaded by the dust of past sins. “It’s not just me in here, Sans. I’m being controlled. I’m fighting it but she’s so strong and... I don’t know how to beat her.”

That was close enough. He let loose, two opposing rows of angled lances catching her full on, first in the back and then in the front.

She gasped, looking up in shock as he pinned her “I wasn’t even… I was asking for help!” She croaked, clutching at the impact points that held her in place.

“sorry, that’s close enough.”

A look of frustration crossed her face as she slumped over and her eyes began to grow distant. “Why couldn’t you have just done this when we met in the first place?” She sighed, seeming utterly disappointed in his timing.

Thirty seconds.

Fading memories.

De ja vu.

A desperate lie of mercy…

Despite the frustrated screams she gave when she threw away her weapons, she accepted his offer.

“you are sparing me?” He asked in surprise, eye sockets widening a little. His surprise turned to unease when he realized the words sounded familiar.

“Sans I need you to help me fight this!” She growled in desperation. “I am trying to fix this but killing me is not helping! You need to tell me what you know about souls and resets. How do they work?” Her whole body twitched and convulsed, seeming to fight against itself as her mouth tried to close in around the strangled words. “She’s hiding things from me!” She wailed.

He took a step back, eye beginning to reignite. “what are you playing at, pal? why should i tell you anything? you seem to have the whole reset thing figured out just fine far as i can tell.” He snapped.

“She does but I don’t! Sans, I’m trying to be good but I need you to tell me what you know!”

He laughed. This was hilarious. How stupid did she think he was? He summoned a single large bone and knocked her to the ground. “now you are trying to be a good person? that’s laughable. really funny, rain. where was that kind of resolve when my brother offered you mercy?” He snared her in a wreath of blue. He felt a distant pulse of warmth and ice in his clenched hand aaher soul began to glow. He threw her against the wall with a wave of his hand. “where was that desire to do good when undyne took a blow meant for a fucking child?” He slammed her into the floor. “were was that change of heart when mettaton begged you to spare humanity?” Bones rose up from the floor. She failed to dodge them. They were purposely blunted but they passed right through her anyway. She shrieked and whimpered, feebly trying to pull herself free.

God, there was so much blood. Why couldn’t he look away?

Her eyes were different when she looked up at him this time. More lucid and less crazed than usual. But there was a clear degree of anger and hurt still tarnishing them. “At least I know I tried!” She spat, blood flecking her lips. “Again and again…an..again… for an eternity.” She gasped between cries of pain. “How do you e-even know what ha…happened? Were you there watching?” She sobbed. “D-didn’t you hear them call out for help? Didn’t you hear me? Why…why didn’t y-ou come?” Her face hardened, jaded. “While you hid behind the other side of that obsidian door, I tried to save the woman you told jokes to.” Her body slipped a little further down the bones, causing her to grunt and shudder. “wh-when you failed to show up to protect your own… fucking… brother… even wh-when …you knew …something was wrong- I spent a day trying to save him!”

Her limbs went lip and her head hung low, hair forming a curtain. “When Undyne tried to stop us, I lied about the direction of her attacks. Wh…when…Metta- when Mettaton chose to distract her in the lab, I helped hide the truth about the...” A wet sigh dripped from her lips. “and now, whenever she swings, I put too much weight in one leg. Whenever she is cut, I m-m-make sure she bleeds! I-I throw my own body in the way of your attacks…again and again…and again.”

Sans backed away, feeling cold and uneasy. This was the right thing to do. He was doing the right thing! She was sick. She was a freak. She was lying. She was insane! He could not afford to let her go. She was too powerful. Too dangerous to go free. Yet still her words cut him. They made his chest ache.

“I…have…fought…..for an eternity….before you e-ever even th-thought…to try.” She snarled. Her back fell as a wet sigh rattled out of her chest and her eyes glazed over.

…Thirty seconds.

***

He did not feel that same moment of surprise when she accepted his mercy this time. Even as he held out his arms in invitation he could tell that they both knew he was lying through his teeth. He had some vague inkling of having done all this before.

It put an unexpected strain on him. He hated doing this when he knew she would just stand there and take it. But things were too far gone for him to give her a second chance.

Not now. Not here.

Why was she doing this? Why? This could hardly be pleasant for her. Could she no longer feel the pain he inflicted upon her? Did she get some sick sort of enjoyment out of this? The echoes in his memory promised him that this was not the case.

This had to be a new strategy that she was trying to prefect. But for the life of him he could not remember what would happen next now that she had accepted his offer. He could only wait and remember when it was too late.

He waited for her to come but she didn’t move. She cradled an injured arm close to her side and took a small step back, a nervous little laugh escaping from between her cracked lips. “I, uh, um…” She shuddered, looking around the room like someone would be standing somewhere in the back waiting to give her her line. “I will just stand here, thanks.”

He scowled. Now this was new. He could feel it. His arms slowly fell back to his sides. “what are you playing at?” He demanded, the fake sugar coating falling off of his words. There was no point in acting. She knew what came next.

“If I take another step forward, you will just kill me- oh don’t give me that look! There is no reason for you to be surprised that I know.” She closed her eyes and held up a hand, as if she would be able to block him when his eye burned yellow and skulls began to appear in the shadows once he knew his ruse was pointless. “Just, stop, please. I’m not going to move. I am unarmed. Please Sans, just give me a chance to try and explain.”

“explain?” He barked. “i think you missed your chance to explain yourself a few hundred murders ago!”

“I have been fighting these resets just as hard as you!” She snapped, then winced as if she had been struck. She cursed under her breath and staggered forward a step, a flash of red anger in her eyes.

The skulls began to hum and she pulled herself back. “Sorry! Sorry! She’s mad. She doesn’t want me to speak. I’m not the only soul in this body, ok? There are two of us.”

The humming quieted down a little. This felt new too. “alright, humor me. i’m listening.”

“I just want to go home, I swear. I just want this all to stop. But the other soul inside of me, she’s angry.”

He shoved his hands back in his pockets. “about what? what does this other soul supposedly want?”

“Revenge.” She shook her head. “On everything as far as I can tell. Something in her soul is missing and now she’s just…angry.”

Sans sighed. This could explain some things if it was the truth. It would explain why she was so much stronger than all the other humans had been. He had chalked it up to her being an adult but she displayed abilities that even their war history failed to mention.

Of course, if she was telling the truth it still meant she had killed at least one monster on her own to gain this soul. “so then who is it? whose soul do you have? who did you kill for it?”

Her body was twitching again. She seemed to struggle with herself. Was it all just a convincing act or was there really someone else in there? Her speech patterns had actually changed now that he thought about it. The way she carried herself was different now as well, as if she was bouncing between two different styles.

He rubbed the back of his skull. His head hurt and the crack over his eye throbbed. He just couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t afford to take her seriously.

This was a mess.

“I didn’t kill anyone. She found me. She was already dead when I fell into the Underground. I think I woke her up when I fell.”

He waved away her explanation. “interesting. not possible, but interesting.” Everyone knew that only boss monster souls persisted after death and even they didn’t last long. Of course he wouldn’t point that flaw out to her. It could be that little mistake in her story that had kept him from falling for her lie all this time.

“Do you know anything about the royal family?” She croaked, leaning on her knees and coughing. Something inside of her was putting up a nasty fight. “They had two children. One monster and one human.”

“yeah, i know the story.” He had managed to catch his breath by now. How long should he let her ramble?

“Asriel and Chara.” She thumped her chest where the faint outline of her soul shimmered, on the cusp of being pulled back into full view for another round of combat. “I have the one called Chara.”

He lifted a disbelieving brow. “the human one?”

“Yeah. The human. She took my s-” Her words became a surprised grunt when the ribs sprung up from the stone to meet her.

Sans’s laughter was frayed as he approached her. A human absorbing a human soul? Laughable. “good job. i gotta hand it to ya lady, you almost had me that time.” He let the bones fall away, leaving her to try and remain standing without the barbed scaffolding there to support her. “right up until the end i almost wanted to believe you.” He admitted.

“I-I was telling the truth!” She stammered. “…I was telling the truth. I thought… I thought you would understand.” There were those eyes again. The ones he hated seeing. He could deal with the crazed red ones; the ones he saw in his dreams. But there was genuine hurt in her expression now. She almost looked human again.

He stood across from her, only a step or two away. “sorry, rain.” He murmured.

She began to fall forward. For once he did not bother to move. He let her fall into his arms this time, catching her in that embrace he had so often mocked her with. She looked up at him, eyes wide but dim. That look seemed to sap him all of his energy. He just felt so tired.

He had done a good job. He kept telling himself that. He had finally gotten off of his boney ass and done something good. He had caught her lie- and it was a lie- he had not been played for a fool. He was doing the right thing… He was stopping her... He was protecting the timeline. She was only lying!

So why did he still want to believe it?

He looked down at her crumpled shape and sighed. Her fingers were digging into his coat, although he did not know why. Maybe she was still trying to claw at him now that the act was over. Maybe she was trying to pull herself back up to her feet so she could go for another round.

But then she buried her face in his coat and he realized she had just been trying to pull herself a little closer, a frustrated sound catching in her throat as she clung to him. The act allowed the blood and tears he had carefully avoided for longer than he could ever be aware of, to finally stain his clothes.

He sank to his knees and she fell with him. He held her a little tighter than he felt she deserved and rested his chin on her shoulder. He felt drained as he spoke, voice far more quiet than he expected. What if there was someone else in there?

He didn’t want to think about it but now the idea gnawed at his mind.

He cleared his throat and attempted to speak but it came out as little more than a ragged whisper. “listen, rain. i won’t pretend to know why you decided you needed to do all this to us. it’s probably just because you’re not right in the head. but if my brother was right… if there is some good left in you…” he stopped himself and shook his head. “heh. hell, i really can’t see it. can’t afford to. but hopefully someone, someday, will. and things will get better for both of us because of it.” He made himself look at her and regretted it. she was still looking at him, the fog of death creeping into her eyes.

“but that person can’t be me. and that day can’t be today.” He rubbed at his sockets, squeezing them shut against the stress. “heh, god, look at me. your little lie has me all choked up! i mean, i know you are just doing all this to trick me. no one just accidentally commits genocide.”

He was quiet for a moment. So was she. The unsettling sound of her flawed breathing sounded far too loud in the empty hall. “i can’t let you go rain- even if what you said was real.” His expression became pained and his words heavy as his voice cracked. “don’t you get it? i’m not fighting to save this world. there is nothing left to save. i’m doing this so i can save the next one. i can only hope that by doing this, by trying to force you to go back… someone else will have a better chance at a happy ending than i ever did. cause i’m tellin' ya right now bud, if you knew what comes next, if i let you go, if you could see the darkness… you would understand that this is mercy. there is no other way i can help you. so rain, please, i’m begging you… don’t come back.”

***

She had thought that she was finally getting through to him. How could someone without any fucking skin be so tight lipped about everything? She could understand his reasoning but it didn’t make things any more pleasant for her. He couldn’t risk giving her information that Chara could parrot back to him later in a manipulation attempt.

Unfortunately that left her right back in the same situation she had started in. Worse off, actually. It had taken every scrap of power she had had to maintain control of her body long enough to say all those things to him.

Damn it. It had looked like he had finally been starting to crack a little too. If she had just had the energy to keep going a little longer then maybe she could have gotten something useful out of him. But now it was too late. She was out of power and running out of time. Chara was back in control. She had been chomping at the bit ever since Sans had allowed them to get close enough to actually touch him.

She tried to mimic the little spiel a few times after seeing how far Rain had gotten with mercy but Sans remained cold and aloof. They had long since backed him up against a wall and he had dug his heels in without any thought of giving up.

The deadly dance resumed.

Chara laughed at Rain for her failed attempts, prodding her as she lay alone in the darkness, winded and weak. She sneered at her as she crawled around in the darkness of her own mind, hugging their accumulated wounds close to her body like stuffed animals to be comforted, feeling their warm sting spreading across their skin as she fought back in every feeble way she could.

She could at least give him this. She would remember the people Chara forgot. She would be the sins weighing upon her back. She would make her bleed for her crimes. As Sans had put it, she would be Chara’s karma.

She was so damn close to something; the answer just barely hidden behind a veil of smoke. Chara had gotten so angry when she had tried to learn about souls and resets. That meant she could probably reset too, if she could only figure out how. At the very least she probably had the ability to stop them.

She felt that Sans had unintentionally given her a hint. A nudge in the right direction. Not in his silence but in his actions. She had said something about her situation that was apparently so unbelievable he had deemed the conversation no longer worth having. It had been something so damming that between one breath and another he had cut her off mid-sentence with a death sentence.

She looked out of the darkness, searching for it.

What was “it”? What was she missing? Why could no one ever just tell her what it is she needed to do!

Chara was gaining ground. They had become so good at all this. In some bitter, ironic way Rain realized that she had finally learned how to dance.

Sans was growing tired. Even with Rain there to bleed them, Chara was no longer getting hit often enough for Rain to slow her down. She was creeping closer and closer to the point of no return.

Rain clawed at her head, screwing her eyes shut and screaming in frustration. What was it! What was it that Chara was hiding from her in the fog!

Her determination was important to Chara. Her continued existence was important. Her desire to live was important.

Think! Think back to what you know. What has she said? What have they all said? You have seen every cavern, every tunnel, every room in this damn place! You know it all by heart. You should know this. It’s obvious.”

Sans was sweating bullets. He was starting to talk again in an attempt to stall her. By now he probably knew that anything he said to them had already been said before but he seemed to hold on to the hope that if he said enough things, he may stumble upon a topic that would distract her long enough for him to get in a good strike.

Rain stepped in to give him what little help she could. She began to sing along to Chara’s song and interrupt her perfect rhythm with her own lyrics and tempo.

I look at your grin and ponder its true meaning

You’re waiting for me, upon your pillar leaning

This day won’t die, times smothered in my dust

They did not deserve this

Wham! Right in the head.

Thirty seconds.

Reset.

A little more time. A few more minutes to think. A few more seconds to rest. God she was so tired. Their body hardly slept anymore. It just reset. Over and over and over again while their minds wandered on in an endless state of awareness that never closed its eyes.

The fight resumed. Skulls, lasers, whirling bones and burning blue attacks. Impossible gravity and murals painted red, cracked stone and birds that sung along to the tune of Chara’s song.

Closer, closer, closer. His death was drawing closer.

Rain closed her eyes and thought. Past resets. The answer was scattered in the conversation of past resets.

“You don’t get it, do you? All your runes, all your prophecies, they were about me. They have always been about me. I am the first to fall. The angel of death.”

“Well that’s the thing about prophecies and the like, isn’t it? They always make sure to be vague so that anyone looking to fulfill them can interpret things however they want! Maybe the Prophecy is about someone who comes to save us from you!”

Sans offered them mercy. Chara pulled out a cheap snack and ate it in front of him. Magic from the meal dripped down into her limbs and helped mend her flesh.

“…I know you can be good again.”

“ Someone out there is going to stop you. People like you always go a bridge too far and fall. Someone better than yourself will strike you down.”

“I can still see kindness in your eyes.”

“So don’t act so smug, I know what you are dear. And I have lived too long to be afraid of your kind. Humans, monsters, something else- the world will always have its shadows.”

Her mind lingered on those words. They were important.

The room was ignited with the eerie light of roaring skulls but soon even that power began to fade. Soon Sans was talking again, growing weary. She tried to distract Chara again but she only shoved Rain deeper into the darkness, going so far as to shun her ability to dull the pain in favor of better control of her movements.

“my brother would really like to see a human. it would make him really happy if, you know, you kept pretending to be one.”

“I can see now that you have something dark in you. Something violent. But surely, if you try, you will do better next time.”

The world was flickering. Gravity was in chaos. They were sliding across the floor, Sans appearing at their side and shoving bones in their path as they skidded down the impossible lane.

This was it. This was the end. He was getting ready to use his special attack.

“Come on Sans! I’m ready! Show me that special attack of yours! Blow me away with your ingenious out-of–the-box thinking!” Chara cackled. She blinked and stepped back when then barrier came up around her.

Sans laughed, oblivious to the fact that he was enacting the same scene that had ended in his death so long ago. “actually, i think it’s time for some in-the-box thinking.” He gave her a tired smile and leaned up against a big chunk of broken marble.

“That’s not funny.” She droned. She was rather disappointed to have dropped her fire poker again. She had thought she had a better grip on it this time. “Fight me, little man.”

“nope. this is it. my special attack. it’s literally nothing. no violence. no combat. it is not and never will be anything. ever. get it? i know i can’t beat you. sooner or later you’re just gonna kill me. it’s sort of your thing, isn’t it? killing people for the sake of killing. so, uh, i’ve decided you’re not gonna get to fight anymore. ever.” He taped on the barrier. The area around his finger buzzed like static.

“see, usually these things can be worn down. but i will just keep supplying it with magic.” He tapped the left side of his skull where the blue and yellow light of his eye had begun to fade back to some semblance of normalcy. “so you can swing away for as long as you like. i won’t leave and it won’t break. i won’t let you step through it. even if that means i have to stand here and watch you until the end of time, capiche?”

She flicked the barrier, her lips twitching. “Damn son, looks like you got me.” Chara declared, voice bone dry.

“yep.”

“you know, all this time I always saw the two of us as the biggest forces down here in the Underground.” She crossed her arms and sat down. Now all she had to do was wait. “The unstoppable force and the immovable object. Everyone always wonders which will win when they collide. I know I always did.” She blew her hair out of her face. “But now I know the answer.”

“oh yeah?” He managed between deep gulps of air.

“The immovable force is immovable, not impenetrable.” She grinned, showing him her bloody teeth. “So it’s still subject to erosion.”

“ah. cleaver. you must be really proud of that thought. but I’m afraid this encounter is still subject to reality. if you don’t give up and go back on your own you will eventually starve to death. i on the other hand, can port in and out fast enough to keep the grub coming before you ever get a chance to break through this thing in my absence.

“you grasping the bottom line yet, pal? you’ve finally reached the end. there is nothing left for you now. so, uh, in my personal option: the most ‘determined’ thing you can do here is to, uh, completely give up and,” he yawned a little, “go do literally anything else.”

“I think I will just wait and see where this route takes me.”

And that’s just what Chara did. She watched and waited in silence for the inevitable to happen as time trickled away before them. His eye sockets were already starting to droop in a heavy lidded fashion. He rubbed at the torn orange fabric of his scarf with a lazy hand. The smell reminded him of home and eased him into an unjustified sort of comfort.

Chara’s heart fluttered. Her dark shadow of a soul skipped with glee. She mentally paraded around the room as Sans drifted closer and closer to sleep.

Rain’s mind raced. Think. Think! What else had everyone said?

The minutes began to stretch on in silence. Rain tried several times to make some sort of noise to startle Sans back into an alert state but Chara hushed her. She tried to throw away their hidden knife but Chara knew that game by now.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Sans’s eyes closed. His breathing became slow and smooth and his face was left buried in the comforting folds of his scarf.

“Yes. Yes!” Chara whispered, getting up and beginning to carefully tap the barrier off towards the location of her dropped poker. “We got him.”

No. No, no, no! Flowey would not be there to destroy Asgore’s soul this time!

“He looks peaceful, doesn’t he? I wonder what he’s dreaming about?”

“Just go. Let him sleep.”

“After all the trouble he’s caused me? I don’t think so. Besides,” she grinned, “I think I do want his coat after all.”

Chara would not awaken the human souls this time. Daniel could not drive her back.

“Should we sing to him again? It would help him rest.”

“No!”

There was no one left in her way. This was it.

Chara began to sing. “It’s Raining…”

Past conversations drifted back into memory.

“You won’t give me any worthless pity! Creatures like us wouldn’t hesitate to kill each other if we got in each other’s way!”

“Human- no, whatever you are…”

“It’s pouring…” She retrieved the poker and began to creep towards Sans. Their heart was racing, pounding so hard they were sure it would wake him.

“If humans can absorb souls too then how come you never see people doing that up on the surface?”

“Because it’s just never worked that way. It’s like trying to force two negatively charged magnets together or something. They don’t want to be together.”

“You have to wake up! She’s sending you back! Fight her! Don’t give up! Stay Determined! You can beat her! She’s not even-”

“Ol Sans is snoring…”

“Sooner or later you are going to have to embrace the side of you, you are running from.”

...No one was left but her.

“I don’t need help, Rain. I don’t want to be redeemed. Do you understand? I don’t want it. All I want right now is for you to learn and understand what my brother was too stupid to fully grasp: that in this world it will always, always be: kill, or be killed.”

“He went to bed…”

It struck her like lightning, causing her whole existence to jolt in revelation. It all fell in together with such finality.

“I know what you are.” Rain whispered.

“Soon he’ll be dead…” Chara raised her weapon.

“You are not a human. You chose to be a demon.”

“And no one’s left to mourn him!” She stabbed at him with the poker, the barbs catching in his clothes and dragging him forward.

His eyes snapped open, flaring yellow as he twisted away from the strike and right into the awaiting reach of her knife.

“did you really think-” He saw the second strike coming but it was too late to act. His eyes widened in shock and he stumbled back, his sentence cut short. He looked down at the rapidly growing pool of blood in disbelief, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

The rest of the world became eerily quiet when Rain fell to her knees.

She looked up at him, smiling in earnest, red blossoming across her chest. Her hands trembled against the hilt of the knife buried against her heart.

Sans continued to stare in disbelief, trying to understand what this was.

She had had him. He knew she had. As soon as he had seen the movement he had seen its echo from another timeline and had known that there was nothing he could have done to avoid it. “what ..?”

“Ha…ha. I did it Sans!” She croaked, falling to her side and wiping the blood from her lips. “I figured it out. th-the great puzz…le.”

Her voice changed. “What did you do!” She snarled, going from soft to demonic in a flash.

Tears slid out of her half closed eyes. “I stopped you.” She sighed.

He dropped to his knees next to her. Those eyes, that voice, they were different. This version was different. Past conversations that had not happened in this timeline began to prick at the back of his mind.

She was laughing and crying, body spasming. “I’m s…o sor…ry S-ans. I was too afraid to face her for s-so long. I…I let this happen.” She reached out to him, searching for his presence in the growing dark.

Despite everything he had seen, everything he felt or struggled to feel up to this point, he still found himself reaching out to hold her hand. He still remembered that once upon a time, somewhere long ago, he had seen this frightened face before and had hoped to be her friend.

His acceptance of her offered hand seemed to calm her.

“what the hell have you done kid? what is this?” He breathed, inching closer to her, eyes locked on the knife in her chest.

“I made a real-ly ba…d decision.” She sighed. Her other hand, stained with blood, reached out to him; painting the cracks against his eye red. The color brought back horrible memories for the both of them but Rain smiled. At least this time it was her blood instead of his. “You have done enough. Now… it’s my turn to f-f…ace her.” Her grip on his hand tightened and a determined light burned in her dying eyes. Her voice became more stable for a brief moment. “I will make things right. I will bring them all back. I promise. This time… will… be different.”

“I will make you pay for this! Do you really think you have changed anything? I will just get him next time!” Chara screeched, furious at having all her progress ruined.

“There won’t be a next time.” Rain replied with steady resolve. A smug smile slipped across her lips. Her tone was rueful and mirthless when the darkness took them. “Don’t you get it? If you won’t live by my rules, then we will die by yours. Don’t you remember Chara? It’s kill or be killed.”