The soul seemed to linger out in front of him for an unusual amount of time. It hovered above the still-warm corpse of the human; trembling and starting to crack. The bright red parts seemed to be trying to hold itself together and stay in one place while the darker shades seemed to try and force the soul to snap apart and disperse.

Something told him this was different. Something told him it usually didn’t take this long for her soul to break.

Still holding the human’s limp hand in one of his, Sans’s slipped his other hand out of his pocket and reached towards the soul. A cautious, tempting hope raced through him. Could he take it? Dare he try?

Responsibility fought against selfishness. If he took it maybe he would regain control of the timeline. This would be her final death. Whatever small fraction of monsters had survived her attack would be allowed to live out the rest of their lives in peace, their crippled civilization fading out with a sigh instead of a scream. Their numbers may have been crippled but the Overworld would be safe.

Would the timeline be as well?

His hand trembled as it touched the edges of the soul. It was warm. Soft in a nonphysical sort of way that was hard to explain. Yet there were veins of bitter cold that ran through it and bit at is knuckles until it made his bones ache.

If she reset, if he let her reset, he would get his brother back. He would get everyone back. There would still be hope for monster kind.

...Maybe.

If she was actually capable of mercy.

In the end his choice was made for him. In his indecisiveness he had done what he always did best: absolutely nothing. The darkness won and the heart shattered, scattering like brilliant ruby raindrops that hissed into a fine mist and drifted away into nothing.

He stood in solemn silence for a moment before shaking his head in defeat. “heh. guess you made the choice for me, huh?” He tucked his hands back into his pockets and looked down the hallway, waiting to see if she would return. “guess for a skeleton i can still be pretty spineless.”

Thirty seconds.

Would this time be any different?

His heart sank when it came. The pull of a soundless vacuum that began to drag him back. At first everything was white, and then it all faded to black. It was sort of like moving through the world’s code when he teleported but this version was far more violent and all-consuming. He had no say in where it would spit him back out again.

It was lasting longer than usual. At least that’s what his gut would be telling him if he had one.

Maybe he really was being sent all the way back this time.

The darkness was soon painted with familiar murals that began to move. He was watching the world rewind, occasionally one view being disrupted by another. Overlapping moments fought to be seen, ramming into one another like glitching, melting photos.

He watched the death of the human unfold in reverse a hundred times over from a thousand different fragments of time. He watched her dodge all of his attacks in backwards motions, wounds healing as she moved farther and farther back down the hall in reverse.

Then everything began to overlap and play out of order or all at once.

She was in Waterfall, fighting Undyne.

Now she was walking out of the room where she had killed Mettaton.

She was pushing her way into Alphys’s lab.

Now they were in Snowdin.

He shook her hand dozens of times. Sometimes he had a whoopee cushion and she laughed. Other times he forgot to bring it and he saw the madness in her eyes only when it was too late to save himself.

He heard her laugh as she cut him across the chest and he felt his skull crack against the rough bark of a tree.

“I can’t believe how easy this is! I can’t believe you are so Hopeless!”

He watched his brother die over and over again. Tears streaming down the human’s face as she let out a wild sort of laughter and screamed at something only she could see.

With a grand sort of finality he saw himself in the golden hall one last time. He felt the sharp pain of a knife cutting deep into his chest, a warm red spilling over his hands as he began to fall. He gasped, looking up at her as she both laughed and cried over her victory and he pitched forward into the darkness. He heard a dry sigh drift past him like dead leaves in the wind, her words continuing to echo even as the whole world faded to black.

“This time will be different.”

***

She was in the dark nothingness between time and death again. Chara was a boiling mass of fury beside her, racing down that long dark tunnel towards the pinprick of light that signified their reset.

Rain pulled back. She did not race her this time. She did not struggle to remain neck and neck with her in an attempt to be the first to seize control of their body. Instead she dug her heels in; drawing herself deeper into the blackness that Chara had once warned her would always be waiting at her back.

Chara stopped, jerking to a halt like a dog that had reached the end of its leash. She pawed at the nothingness in confusion before turning back to Rain, red pinpricks of light staring at her in horrified realization.

They were connected. They had always been connected. Chara had latched onto her soul to preserve herself. She couldn’t go back to that body unless Rain went with her.

“No! What do you think you are doing! You can’t just drag us back to the lifeless dark like this! We had him!”

“And now we are letting him go.”

“If you stay in here you will die!” She snarled, turning against Rain and attacking her, their ethereal shapes coiling and uncoiling in fits of rage and smoke as Chara tried to pull her closer to the light while Rain leaned deeper into the darkness.

“So what if I die? I was such an idiot! I was so afraid of spending the rest of my existence in pain, unable to move or speak, that I sold my soul to avoid it! But isn’t that what happened to me anyway? No freedom, no agency. Just my own painful, personal hell where I get to see someone use my body to kill people. Hah! I choose to face the darkness over watching you slander my life.”

“I. Wont. Let you!” In a storm of imagined teeth and nails they tumbled, closer and closer to the light; Chara’s Determination to live pulling them near the threshold.

In a surge of defiance Rain pulled back, determined to stay dead and thus dragging them back into the pit of gaping cracks-and-nothingness.

She did not know how much power Chara had over her. Rain could not force her to leave her body but she could still fight back. Everyone said that a human soul was the strongest kind of soul out there. Chara had been human once but something had been broken inside of her. Like her brother, she was incomplete. So maybe, just maybe, Rain could beat her.

“All this time you have been feeding on my fears. You worked so hard to make me afraid to die. You knew! You knew that I could do this to you! You knew that the only way to stay in control was to keep me afraid. You let me fight the outward battle so I would ignore the literal demon in my head!”

Their save point was drifting farther and farther away. Like she trying to pry something sticky from her hands, Rain peeled herself away from that connection. She poured all of her Determination into letting that save point go. The light of the golden hall faded away.

Good. She would drag them back to the very beginning then. She would pull them all the way back to before they had hurt anyone, even if she had to get there by dragging Chara across the darkness one sluggish inch at a time. They would make this right. They would die were the rain fell.

“It’s too late, Rain. Your soul is mine. Your body is mine. You wanted someone to take you by the hand and make all the hard choices for you. This is what you get. It comes with the package! You don’t get the only say in this choice.”

Chara’s struggle became more and more frenzied. Rain could feel it now, the fear that had once been hidden behind her own. Like Asriel, she was afraid to die. She was afraid to find out what would happen to her soul if it was allowed to continue rotting. She was not yet strong enough to survive the void on her own.

Rain tried to cast her out. She tried to break their connection but it was beyond her power. Chara’s Determination to hang on was too strong.

“Take us back!” Chara wailed, leaning towards the distant sensation of falling rain. There was only the true reset left to turn to now. Chara was inching closer to it, running from the darkness and its darker cracks. Cracks that in turn were gaining their own gaps of deeper nothingness as the two of them lingered too long in a place that they should not be.

Falling.

Falling…

Falling…

They were stuck in limbo, Rain clinging to the darkness while Chara leaned into the light. But eventually Rain slipped and they fell into familiarity once more.

Chara celebrated a brief moment of triumph, believing to have once again regained control of the situation. Rain cursed as they collapsed into the familiar bed of flowers and felt raindrops pepper their hair.

So it seemed there were some limits she still could not pass. She could not will herself to stay dead while her other half wished to live.

That was fine for the time being. She knew of other ways to fight back now. She finally knew that she was not powerless. She had just been trying to find her solution in the wrong direction all this time.

“Go on then. Try again if you want. Go pick up a weapon. It won’t help you anymore.” Rain thought, her voice calm and cold.

She had done it. She may not have stopped them from reincarnating but she had brought them all the way back to the beginning with her own power. She had had to kill herself to do it but by now that was nothing extraordinary to her. It was simply a newly realized advantage.

Chara was strong. Their power nearly even. But now Rain knew two important things to keep Chara from overpowering her.

One: so long as she remained calm, Chara could not feed off of her fears and turn her Determination against her.

Two: every weapon Chara picked up from now on was a weapon she was placing directly in Rain’s hand.

If Chara gave her an opportunity and a reason to kill herself again, she would do it. It didn’t take that much effort to skew the direction of an attack like she had done with the knife.

She did not have to wait for a hero to stop them. She did not have to throw herself in front of someone else’s attack. Not when Chara was so willing to place a weapon in the hand of her most dangerous enemy.

Chara may be able to block some of her attempts but not all of them. And if each one sent them farther and farther into the darkness then perhaps over time it would swallow them for good.

Heh. That was another problem Chara couldn’t just solve by stabbing: the growing darkness. Chara’s abuse of resets was going to swallow them up one day and Rain would let it if she had to.

A single flower rose above all the others, jarring Rain from her scheming.

Chara turned her dark eyes upon her brother. Her fists were clenched and her jaw set but it was not by her will that they did so; it was Rain’s.

“I understand now. I see what it was you had been hoping I would never find. I’m the one enemy in this whole damn world you can never get rid of. The only person you can’t push away. The only problem you can’t solve by stabbing. If you hurt me, you hurt yourself. If you kill me, you kill yourself.

“I’m ready to face death if I have to, Chara. It’s worth it if it stops you. If it’s kill or be killed then let’s go. Let’s have a fight to the death. Because even if you kill me, it still means I win.”

***

The world flickered.

The world flickered.

The world flickered.

Sans’s eyes snapped open and he fell forward with a gasp, hand shooing up to his chest where the familiar wound should have been. He continued to fall, arms flailing against the constricting cocoon of sweaty sheets. He fell out of bed with a dull thud.

He groaned and held his head in his hands, eye glowing and alert as a fading torrent of half-remembered images continued to swim around in his head. His skull felt like it was going to split open.

He scanned the room with wild eyes, ready to defend himself at the slightest hint of movement. It took him a moment to realize where he was.

Home. He was back home. He wasn’t in the king’s castle anymore.

He took in a long, slow breath and rubbed at his eyes. Already everything was fading. He tried to hold on to the memories. They were too important to loose. He couldn’t afford to forget! But they slipped between his fingers like countless grains of sand. Soon he no longer really remembered why it was so important to remember. After all, it had just been another bad dream.

This thought filled him with an overwhelming sense of relief that he couldn’t quite justify or understand. It was both frustrating and exhilarating.

He had lost his shirt some time during the night amidst all his tossing and turning and now the sheets were all tangled up and snagged on his vertebrae. He pulled the sheets away with a rough hand and felt along his ribs, desperate to reassure himself that he was still in one piece.

He winced when a finger scraped against a strange groove in his bones. He looked down and scowled at the long, smooth scar that stretched from the top of his left shoulder to the bottom right side of his ribcage. “the hell?” He muttered. It looked like he had lost a fight against a chisel. It looked pretty old but it was still tender to the touch.

It made his soul twist with worry. When had he gotten that? It looked like it had been serious so why couldn't he remember? And good god why did his head hurt so much?

He finished disentangling himself from his sheets. There were a few small holes in the fabric where things hand snagged on his bones during the night. Great.

Somewhere outside of his room the floorboards creaked and a door swung open. The realization that he was not alone hit him like a ton of bricks. He was just so incredibly relieved to know this.

“Sans! Sans are you awake yet?” Papyrus called, knocking on the door before pushing it open just wide enough for him to poke his head through the gap. Papyrus looked a little more worn down that usual. “You are going to be late for work of you don’t- oh!” He pushed the door all the way open and the tired look he had been wearing retreated until the only hints of its existence were the worn out shadows resting under his eyes. He beamed with approval when he saw Sans. “Wowie, you are already up!”

Sans sprung to his feet and rushed over to his brother, wrapping his arms around him and hugging him as tight as he possibly could.

He was fine. He was still here. Papyrus was ok- why was he so relieved to know that? Papyrus was always fine! Better than fine, actually.

Papyrus grunted in surprise upon impact, having to brace himself against the threshold of the door to keep from being knocked over by the embrace. He returned the hug. “Um, Sans, is everything ok?”

Fragments of the dream boiled back up to the surface.

A red scarf dancing in the wind, missing boots, a strike across the neck-

He squeezed his eyes shut against the memory. He was here. His brother was still here. Everything and everyone was still right where he had left them. It had not been real...right?

...Heh.

Papyrus’s voice dropped to a sad murmur. “Were you having bad dreams again?”

Sans pulled away, hiding his worry behind a smile as he always did. “nah bro, i’m good. no big deal, promise.”

Papyrus looked down at him with a critical eye. The dim light that crept in from the window highlighted the top of Sans’s skull and Papyrus’s eyes widened. “Oh my god! San! What happened?”

Sans’s smile faltered a bit when Papyrus knelt down by him and took his head in his hands; gently turning it this way and that so he could see something in the dim light.

“what? what is it?”

Papyrus reached back behind him to flick on the light. A moment later Sans could feel his brother’s weak healing magic gently prodding at him. “Did you do this when you fell out of bed? What did you hit your head on?”

Sans pushed his hands away, eye twitching against the less than comfortable feel of magic trying to pull something back together. “what are you talking about bro? i’m fine.”

“You are many things Sans but fine is not one of them! You should go visit a healer. I can’t heal this on my own. You are very fortunate that you are still standing!”

Sans finally ran a hand over his skull in confusion and winced when his fingertips brushed against a thick crack in his skull.

Oh. So that’s why he had a splitting headache. His head was literally split.

“turn around and shake my hand.”

“It’s raining, it’s pouring…”

The snow was red. Why was it so, so red?

Sans slipped between Papyrus and the door, hurrying to find a mirror despite his brother’s worried objections at having been brushed aside.

Sure enough when he got a good look at himself his soul pretty much dropped out from under him with a sense of dread. He traced the cracks in his skull, the two main cracks making a lightning pattern across his temple and cheek while a spider web of much smaller lines decorated the edges of his eye like little messy scribbles.

It was sore to the touch but the wound itself was old. There was no magic or dust leaking from the crack. He could even see a few marks around the tail end of the cracks where things had fused back together in an ugly, improper way; like a broken nose that had never been properly set.

He stared at himself in the mirror, focusing on the darkness beyond the pricks of light in his sockets. He could feel the heavy weight of dread and dejavu resting on his shoulders again. He had no solid memory of when this had happened to him and yet the wound was old.

He stifled a melancholy chuckle. Damn. He was starting to look a lot like the last guy who had gotten himself mixed up in too much time stuff. Maybe this was bound to happen. A result of him trying too hard to cling to things that continued to evade proper memory.

“Sans, where in the world do you think you are going? Don’t run away from this!” Papyrus chided, having caught up to him again.

Sans took a second to clear his mind.

Ok. Something was new. Something was happening. Something weird and bad and he wasn’t sure what. Those dreams he sort-of-knew-were-not-dreams had something to do with it. But every time he tried to focus in on them they dispersed into the realm of vague thought. Trying to understand them just chased them away. The only way he could really grab a hold of them at all was to look the other way and let the memories brush up against him on their own.

This whole situation was new and weird. He needed time to think and he needed to assure his brother he wasn’t going to turn to dust.

He rolled his eyes in a nonchalant way and turned to his brother, suddenly all smiles. “ah, crap. now i remember how i got this.” He snapped his fingers together- well, it was more of an odd clacking sound than an actual snap- “i got a little carried away at grillby’s the other night and slipped on the ice on my way home.” He brushed past Papyrus and hurried downstairs to snatch his coat up off the couch, Papyrus still squawking his objections and worries at his back as he went.

“Sans that looks horrible! You need to go get that fixed!”

“one of the guys at the bar already tried to patch me up but i guess he didn’t do a good job making it look pretty. s’fine though. promise. looks worse than it is. just a little sore s’all.” He pulled up the hood of his coat to hide the worst of it, ducking his head to employ the shadows to help camouflage the mark.

“It looks really bad, Sans.” Papyrus objected, voice growing soft and worried. “Maybe... maybe you shouldn’t go in to work today. You should visit someone who can heal you properly. I’m sure Undyne will understand. I can call her for you and let the dogs know you won’t be in today.”

“nah bro, i’m all good to go. doesn’t even hurt unless i mess with it.” or breathe... or blink.

Sans’s desire to work only seemed to add kindling to the fire for Papyrus. “but you always try to find reasons to take sick days! You said you loved having so many jobs because of all the extra sick days!”

Sans shrugged. He wanted to get out of here. He needed to go check some things. A voice in the back of his head kept nagging at him; telling him that he had a very limited amount of time in which he could do anything worthwhile. How long would these half-feelings be around to guide him before they faded away?

Then as if he had hit a physical wall, his brief moment of determination drained away into realization and clarity, causing his shoulders to sag.

What if he had already done all of this a hundred times before? These scars were not accidents. They were just the latest thing to seep through the cracks as time continued to tear and fray around them.

Just because he could not tell for sure if the dreams were actually linked to the time distortions or not didn’t mean he hadn’t noticed that time had stopped working properly a long time ago.

His hands, which had been holding the hood of his coat down over his eyes, now slowly slid away and sank back into his pockets in defeat.

What was the point? Whatever he was planning to do had obviously never worked in the past. They were in the heart of it now. The heart of the chaos. He already knew how it ended: darkness. If his past selves, the versions of him that had still had hope couldn’t save them, then what good would he be now?

He was a tired bag of bones with one measly HP and a history of “dreams” that were apparently so violent and futile that his scars were starting to transcend time and reality. He had very little left in him. Hell, he had just woken up and already he felt like he needed a nap. He didn’t feel like he had slept at all last night.

“yeah, ok. i guess i can take a half day or something.” He grunted. “maybe i will call someone about the crack. you know, to keep you from worrying.” He winked.

Papyrus smiled in approval. Papyrus always seemed to be smiling. Real smiles too, not the tacky forced ones Sans usually wore. Yet still there were troubling shadows under his eyes. “Alright. I will be sure to let everyone know. Do try to take care of yourself while I am gone.” He chirped.

Those words hit at Sans like a dagger in the chest.

While I’m gone.

When I’m gone.

The bright color of his scarf led him to him. It danced around in the wind in a mockery of true life. Why did it move so much in a world that felt so still? Why did it mock him with its animated movements while its owner lay at its feet as nothing more than dust?

Why could he only manage to feel numb?

“what do you mean? You won’t be gone long right? You just have to go check your puzzles.” Sans asked, his voice a little more on edge than he would have liked.

Papyrus scowled at this unusual misunderstanding. “Of course. Although, since you will not be on your patrol route I shall take it upon myself to do both our rounds for today. As a future Royal Guardsmen it is my duty to maintain the line! So perhaps I shall be a little later than usual tonight.” He took his scarf from the coat rack and wrapped it around his neck. He put his hands on his hips and took in a deep breath, puffing out his chest. “I can feel it brother! Today will be the day. I just know it. Today feels like it’s going to be different! Today will be the day I find a human!”

Sans smiled a little but said nothing. It had been years since a human had shown up in the Underground, so the twisting pit of dread in his stomach probably had nothing to do with his brother’s mention of humans... right? Sans tried to remember his dreams. Who had he been fighting in them anyway?

He pushed the thought away, not wanting to think too much about it. “go get 'em, bro.” He murmured without enthusiasm.

“I will!” Papyrus all but kicked open the door in his enthusiasm and hurried off.

The smile did not exactly slip from Sans’s face once he was gone, it simply became empty and slack.

He checked himself over in the mirror again, carefully prodding at the crack. He considered going to get it healed properly but it really wasn’t hurting that much anymore. The thought of either making an official appointment or going all the way out to visit a friend who could take a look at it for him just felt exhausting. He was holding himself together just fine and he really wanted to just go back to bed and chase after that proposed nap now.

But that annoying, nagging thread of something kept tugging on him; urging him to do something this time. Anything! Even if he didn’t think it would help.

He usually didn’t have too many nightmares during naps but he was not quite ready to flip the proverbial coin and take his chances just yet, so he shuffled around the house for a bit. He dug around in the fridge and flipped through the channels as he tried to figure out what it was that was tickling at the back of his mind, trying to remind him that he had something to do.

Whatever had really happened last night, the journey must have been a strange one. There were many points in his past where he had been able to notice the resets but this was the first time the feelings and the memories had managed to linger around for more than a minute or two without something familiar there to jog his memory.

He rubbed his hands against his face to try and chase away the shadows under his eyes. Alright, he would go do something. He just needed to do some busywork to help take the edge off of his lingering anxiety. Then he could hit the hay. The time distortions were much easier on him and far less jarring if he was sleeping when they happened. But sleep didn’t seem to be an option for him just yet. So he decided it was time to fire up the machine again.

He went upstairs to grab the key, considering and then dismissing the option of finding a new shirt to wear. Instead he just zipped up his coat and shoved the key in his pocket. He contemplated grabbing his sneakers but in the end he just shuffled into a pair of fuzzy slippers and wandered outside.

He crunched through the snow, the harsh frozen layers of ice underneath scraping at his ankles as he went. It had been a while since he had been out here so the path was all filled in with snow and ice. His brother had been hounding him to shovel the walkway for the past few days. He should probably get around to doing that soon.

Eh, maybe later. If the week progressed properly. Which it probably wouldn’t.

He flicked on the light in the basement. The smell of dust, paper and ozone were heavy in the air. It was cold enough for him to see his breath but it wasn’t harsh enough to bother him. Skeletons were pretty numb to the cold and by now he was used to it anyway.

He blinked against the glare of the overhead lights reflecting against the smooth glossy tiles of the floor and walls. He ignored the charts and notes left stuck to the wall by his desk and stepped over several mounds of old papers. In a practiced motion he went up to the old machine pushed up against the far wall and flipped up the edge of the sheet draped over its frame. He tossed the sheet overhead until it snagged on something and gave him a drooping window to work under.

The years had not been kind to the machine. He had not been kind to it. Where once he had gone through great pains to ensure that the machine had remained pristine and well maintained to the best of his ability, he had long since let the machine- much like himself- go.

Exposed chips and wires stuck out of many of the panels and compartments. The the center chamber of the beast had boxes of old parts stack up inside of it and various compartments that should have been sealed away were instead left exposed with missing bolts. The display screen had a thick coat of dust on it.

“alright. let’s see if you still work.” He had to bend over and dig around a bit to find the startup button. Then he had to rearrange a lot of crap to plug things back in when the scanner didn’t start right away. Finally with a tired groan the scanner grumbled to life and the screen lit up.

Sans gave the monitor a pat. “i know buddy. me too.”

After the long startup process he typed in a few commands that still managed to manifest in the form of muscle memory despite all the time that had passed- and his lack of mussels.

Unfortunately the core functions of the machine were beyond his ability to repair but some of the minor systems still clung to life and managed to work on a good day. Those systems acknowledged his request and he dropped some paper in the nearby printer then left the computer to do its thing.

He tried to clean things up a bit while he waited but he just ended up reshuffling everything in a way that neither improved or worsened the situation.

He fidgeted in the near silence of the droning machine. It would be several hours before he got any accurate readings.

He didn’t really expect anything to have changed since the last time he had read the charts. He really shouldn’t be looking at them at all. He had promised himself not to after the stress had started to make his brother worry.

He checked the printer to make sure it still had plenty of ink.

It did. He always made sure it did. Yet every time the readings came out blank he always had to check again anyway.

He paced around in the crowded space for a while longer, opening up old drawers and looking through the dusty notes and pictures inside. He found an old drawing and his teeth pressed together in a bitter way. The words “do not forget” had been scribbled off in the corner of the page. His soul twisted and he quickly tucked the scrap back into its folder.

Soon a heavy realization settled upon his shoulders, brought on by the memory of the drawing.

He didn’t know what would happen this reset but he had to brace himself for the worst.

Sans sat down, pulled out a mostly blank piece of paper and began to write a note; listening to the machine whirr and beep behind him as he poured out his thoughts in black ink and then stashed the letter away in his pocket.

Something big was coming. He didn’t remember who or what or why but he knew things were probably going to get pretty bad soon. He had to prepare for that. He had to prepare Papyrus for that.

Once the note was written and it became all the more clear that waiting for the scan to finish would be a waste of time that brought him no peace, Sans’s mind began to wander towards other prospects.

He could go take that nap now. No reason to put it off.

But that nagging feeling wouldn’t let him do it. He should go be with his brother instead.

He had really missed him.

Why had he missed him? Probably not a good idea to pry too much at that question. But something important was coming and he should be there with him when it arrived.

He went back inside to put on a proper shirt and examine the new-old scars again. Honestly he should be dead. Anything strong enough to leave marks like that should have dusted him. But he supposed he had skipped the whole taking damage part of the scar making process this time.

He stepped out into the snow; eyes following his brother’s tracks down the street. The snow had not been able to fill them in yet.

A voice echoed around inside his skull as he headed towards the forest. Maybe it was his voice. Maybe it was someone else’s. It was probably nothing more than a sweet whispered lie but dammit if it didn’t make him curious.

“This time will be different.”