Her hands seemed to be permanently balled up into fists. Her knuckles were white and her fingernails were digging into the palm of her hand. She kept her head bowed. She stared at her reflection in the polished surface of the table but couldn't take in anything she was seeing.

Papyrus had flooded her with a waterfall of offers and questions, taking note of her poor state and insisting that she stay the night with him and his brother so she could get some rest.

Sans had been a little less enthusiastic about things. He had masked it by telling his brother to go on ahead to make the house presentable for their new guest while he took her aside to grab a bite to eat.

Papyrus had huffed about feeding “the Human” grease but when she didn’t join in his objections he declared that he would go make a backup meal for them at home.

Still in a state of shock, Rain had let Sans guide her towards the empty bar and grill. He offered her a seat at the bar but when she continued to hang back near the door he pointed out a booth off in the corner near the exit instead.

The snug feeling of the booth felt nice and its proximity to the exit was enough to convince her to finally sit down. Once he was certain she wasn’t going to bolt on him, Sans vanished with the promise of being right back.

She rubbed her cold face and ran her fingers through her hair. What was this? What the hell was this? What had she done? How had she done it? What did she do now?

She should be happy that she had finally gained a hard earned victory but she just felt like someone had kicked her chair out from under her while she was sleeping.

Not to mention she had to deal with the fact that Chara was absolutely pissed. And…scared?

“You think you can ignore me? You think that by pretending not to hear me I will just go away like a bad thought? Do you think I’m just some negative emotion for you to learn to control? You idiot! I am not someone you get to just walk past and ignore! I am your shadow. I go were you go. And one day when your eyes are closed, I will take back what is mine and push you back into this darkness. I will destroy you by destroying everything you thought you saved from me!”

“You are wrong.”

“You know that I’m not.”

“I won’t let you hurt them this time.” She vowed, glancing through the frost-kissed windows. She couldn’t stay long. She would have to keep moving. She didn’t want to risk Chara catching her second wind when Papyrus was still nearby. There was no way in hell she was going to let Chara take this one from her. She had already saved over the encounter so that the only way they could go back far enough to change the outcome of the encounter would be if they did a true reset and neither of them were particularly enthusiastic about that idea.

Of course there was nothing stopping Chara from trying to kill him again later in this timeline. There were no rules saying that if you spared someone once you could never fight them again in the linear future.

Rain started to get up out of her chair. Screw this. It was time to go. Chara was weakened right now. Rain had full control. So why was she wasting precious time sitting in a bar?

There was a brief second of static as she prepared to leave and then Sans was standing over her. “leaving already?”

She froze in place, staring at him out of the corner of her eye. She opened her mouth to make an excuse but nothing more than a dry sort of rambling sound managed to crawl out of her throat.

He shrugged and slid into the booth across from her. “hey, that’s ok. i get it. grease isn’t everyone’s thing. still, you look like you could use something that will stick to your ribs after the night you’ve had. i know i could.” He put his elbows up on the table and gave her a friendly wink from his right eye.

She blinked at him. Was that supposed to be a pun?

“Yes I think it was.” Chara grumbled. She was pacing like a cat just behind Rain’s eyelids; annoyed that he was here but aware that there was little she could do at moment to get rid of him.

Rain eased back down into her seat only to smash her knees again the table in flinching surprise when the fire exit swung open and Grillby stepped inside.

“He’s still here?” She wondered aloud, astonished. Her shock only grew when Greater and Lesser Dog came in through the main door with Doggo in tow. They were followed by two or three other locals who poked cautious heads inside to gawk at her before inching over to their preferred seats. Her mouth hung open at the sight of them. She had thought everyone had left town.

An uneasy murmur began to slink around the room until the other monsters were silenced by a warning look from Sans.

She looked away, gripping the edge of the table. They were giving her a wide berth. To say she was welcome would be an exaggeration. Some mix of curiosity and defiance must have drawn them back out. Perhaps Papyrus had told tall tales about her kindness behind her back. Maybe Sans had told everyone it was safe to come out if they wanted to.

Ever so slowly the room began to fill with the warm murmur of conversation. For her it was even worse than the uneasy silence form a few moments earlier. She hunched her shoulders and sank deeper into her seat, hiding her face under a veil of ugly hair.

Sans watched her closely. Her reaction to the other patrons was rather damning. She looked like she had just seen a room full of ghosts. “whats a’matter pal? not one for chatter?”

Raid avoided eye contact and started to trace lines across the table with an idle finger. “You could say that.” She had been in this bar many times before but it had always been empty. Dark and deathly quiet with still-warm meals left waiting on the tables for patrons that would never return. She had never been inside while this place was occupied. Over time she had come to assume the natural state of the building was that quiet darkness that always consumed the small town in her wake.

She didn’t want to look up from her table. The guard dogs were starting a card game off in the other corner. They made sure none of their backs were turned to her. She had never seen that before. She didn’t know dogs liked card games. They had always been dead by the time she got here. She had only ever seen their empty seats.

The room was starting to gain some pleasant warmth to it now. Grillby cast an inviting light across the tables, making everything feel homely. She had never seen things in this light before. She had gotten so used to a life filled with screams, dust, then silence. She had come to see the empty streets and the loneliness of only having the voice inside her head for conversation, as normal.

But this was different. This was life.

She did not belong in its presence.

“don’t worry. they aren’t going to bother you. they are more interested in their drinks now. grillby is keeping things open tonight in celebration.” Sans assured, perhaps misplacing her reaction a little.

“In celebration of what?”

He shrugged. “of everything being ok.”

She ducked her head again. “but everything’s not ok.”

Sans clacked his teeth together and ran a hand over his skull. “you talkin about the kids you left out in the forest and dogaressa?”

“You know about them?” She balked. “Then why the hell are you still talking to me?”

Sans glanced at her then turned his attention to Grillby, who had detached himself from the bar and stepped forward in silence, startling Rain yet again.

“hey grillb, i’ll just take some fries and my usual.” He turned to her. “what about you? burger? fries? a drink?”

She laughed- a nervous, nearly unhinged sort of sound. “I think its best if I stay away from the alcohol.”

“then what strikes your fancy?”

Her mouth made a lot of strange movements and she looked between Sans and Grillby as if one of them would give her the answer she needed. She felt too nervous to really enjoy eating anything or even keep it down. Finally she managed to talk for the sake of getting them to stop looking at her. “I don’t know. Something light? Like, toast? A bagel? Have anything like that?”

Grillby nodded and made his way back to the fire exit.

Chara growled in displeasure at her choice. “Bagel.”

Rain swatted her away, eyes intent on Sans. Her whole body remained tense. This felt just like all those times she had taken his false mercy. She was waiting for him to snap. She knew he had it in him.

He drummed his fingers against the table, head propped up with his free hand. He closed his right eye and narrowed the left down to a lazy slit and picked up the conversation where it had left off. “the monsters you hurt will be fine. just saw them a minute ago. no one died. may want to avoid dogamy for a while though, he’s pissed. but hey, i figure it’s all water under the bridge as far as i’m concerned.”

“Right.” Ran agreed with no real trust or enthusiasm. “Um, Sans?”

“yeah?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“cause you looked like you needed a break.”

Her shoulders sagged. Her voice was a dry whisper. “Yeah.”

He opened his eyes and perked up a little. “and, well, i just wanted to snow my appreciation, ya know? i really respect what you did back there.” There seemed to be a genuine tone of relief in his voice. But there was something else hidden in there too. One wouldn’t think that the lights suspended in the sockets of a skull could be very expressive but she had spent enough time around him now to see that he was worried. Worried that she may change her mind and take this all away from him.

He was waiting for the other shoe to drop too.

Grillby returned with their food, a welcome relief from the awkward silence that continued to grow as Rain fumbled with the thought of conversation.They both seemed to be biting back on things they wanted to say.The world around them continued to murmur and indulge in friendly chatter while between the two of them each word felt strained.

Rain gratefully took the toasted bagel she was given and clung to its existence like a life preserver. It was something to look at other than Sans.

Chara made another brooding sound when she saw the strawberry jam and cream cheese on her food. “I hate bagels.”

“Well then go to sleep so you won’t taste it.”

“Just get some fries or something like we always do! You know that can’t be real cream cheese, right?”

“Leave me alone. I’m tired. Just let me eat in peace. I earned this.”

Rain tried to take a bite but Chara caused her to nearly drop it instead.“Bagels are just doughnuts that dropped out of college.”

Rain slammed her fist down on the counter. Sans twitched. “Dammit, it’s my body and it’s my bagel so shut up!”

Sans frozen in place, the white glow of his eyes glancing back and forth at nothing in particular. “uh, ok. but i wasn’t saying anything.”

Rain tried to stutter out an apology but nothing more than half-words came out. It had been such a long time since she had had a proper conversation with anyone other than Chara. Her social skills had decayed. “I’m sorry. I should go. I should… go.”

“nah. settle down. stay a while. i have been meaning to talk to you but, well-" he picked at his fries and popped the cap off of the ketchup bottle Grillby had left them. “i don’t really think the situation ever presented itself properly.”

Chara was narrowing her eyes in suspicion, the bagel rebellion forgotten. “Wait, does he know?”

“I’m sure he has a hunch. Otherwise he would have met us by the bridge.”

Chara dismissed her own question. “Hmm, no. He’s smart but I doubt he is remembering. He was probably just sleeping when we came in this time.”

"Maybe." Rain consented,casting Sans an apprising look, trying to guess what was going on inside his head. But despite her best attempt to interpret the situation she found herself at a loss.

***

Outside of their mental chatter, Sans was pressing on with his own conversation, trying not to let her mind settle in one place for too long. His soul thrummed in unease as he tried to press on like nothing was wrong. “not really sure how to ask this. kind of worried what the reaction will be but i guess if i mess this up it won’t matter anyway.” He looked up to see how she was taking all this. He tried to get some hint as to whether or not admitting he knew what was going on would send her into another fit of panic, rage or whatever it was that caused her to become so violent but he couldn’t be sure.

He noticed her eyes kept darting up to the crack in his skull. He sighed and tapped the mark. “you uh, you know how i got this, don’t you? we’ve met before, haven’t we?”

She jumped half way out of her seat, slamming her knee against the table and nearly knocking over her plate. Several monsters sent her nervous looks. “What? No! The cracks? I don’t know.” She flailed a little, trying to find something non-condemning to do with her hands. “I mean, I bet it’s a cool story. That I don’t know. A story that I don’t know- are you going to tell it?” She stammered.

“hey. hey, calm down.” He waved his hands in a gesture that invited her to sit back down. Again. She couldn’t seem to keep herself still for very long.

He tried to act casual about her reaction but he could feel himself pressing his back against his seat a little too hard while his mind ran through his escape plan just in case things turned sour. “c’mon, i just want to talk, alright? sit down. enjoy your bagel. or, don’t. your body your bagel right?”

She was stuck between the motions of getting up and sitting down for an awkward amount of time. She didn’t blink as she finally lowered herself back down into her seat. “You remember me?” She asked slowly.

He tried to laugh to lighten the mood but it didn’t come out as sounding very mirthful. “yeah. i think so. little bits and pieces.”

She lowered her voice for the sake of the other guests. “So why am I not dead yet?" She hissed.

He shrugged, frustrated by how helpless he felt. “what would be the point? if i killed you here you would just reset, right? again and again until you beat me. or even worse, you would rip us all from this timeline and drag us back to the beginning.” He stared out at nothing over her shoulder, his fingers tracing idle patterns against his plate. “like i said: i really respect what you did back there with my brother. i’m not eager to ruin it.”

The human’s whole body sagged. Whether with relief or guilt he could not tell. “Oh.”

He was picking at his fries again; bringing them half way to his mouth then just letting them drop back onto the tray whenever he became distracted by his thoughts. “look, i know you have been resetting the timeline. all i want to know is why. why do you keep doing this? and why did you deviate tonight?”

The human began to nibble at her bagel to buy herself time. She still wasn’t looking him in the eye. He waited patiently for her to finish chewing but that just lead to her taking an even bigger bite and chewing a little slower than last time.

“come on lady, work with me here. do you plan on resetting again soon? are you just doing this for laughs? did we do something wrong? did i do something wrong?” He looked down at the table and grimaced. The tips of his fingers had strayed from his fries and had begun to make little scratches in the table. “i know i have probably asked you this a hundred times already and i bet you’re sick of answering me but even i deserve at least this much, right? i just want to know how long i have with my brother before things, well, you know.”

Her voice was so quiet he was surprised he could hear it at all when she answered him. It was worn and cracked like old paper tossed away by a gust of wind. “I don’t want to reset anymore, Sans. I hate resetting.”

He blinked in surprise. He had… he had not been expecting that. “then why?”

Her lip twitched. “You’re not in the mood for shish-kabob, are you Sans? You didn’t sneak any spare ribs into the bar, did you?”

He gave her a confused look. “what?”

She set down her bagel. “The last time I tried to tell you what was happening, you didn’t believe me.” she held up a hand, long fingers spread wide. “You ran me through with five different sets of bone.” She began to point out different points of entry across her torso and chest. “Here, here, here, here-” she pulled down the singed hem of her collar to reveal the pale twisted skin underneath where a dark scar two inches across and three inches wide marked the area just under her right shoulder. “And here.”

For the first time since he had found her clinging to his brother out in the snow, she looked him in the eye and held his gaze without fear. It was easy to see that she was still upset with him for that death but the anger seemed…distant.

He sucked in a slow breath through his teeth and leaned back. He knew he had fought her. He had nightmares about it. Visions of past lives, premonitions of his future- however you wanted to slice it the bottom line was he knew there had been a great deal of violence between the two of them. Still, it was a little unnerving to see such evidence and know that that was something he had done. Something he had chosen to do.

“Then you laughed. You laughed at me while I slid farther and farther down the spikes and felt them tear through my back. You laughed as I threw away my weapons and let you skewer me. You didn’t just not believe me when I tried to tell you why this was happening, you violently refused to listen.”

Her eyes were cold and distant, replaying a memory she recalled with perfect clarity. For the first time in a long while Sans found himself feeling grateful that he could only recall glimpses of what had happened to him. Who knew how many deaths she had to remember in perfect detail? He knew he had put up a spectacular fight in another lifetime. Despite his reputation for being lazy he did not go down easy.

He looked her up and down again, taking in her full appearance. She was definitely the same person he had met before in his past lives. The familiarity was all there. But there was something off about her now.

It wasn’t just the eyes that felt different. He recalled smooth skin and bloodshot eyes. A curvy body and brief flashes of red hair. The creature that sat before him now was no longer like that. To put it simply, she had decayed. She had lost weight in a way that was probably unhealthy for humans. Her hair was a dull tangled mess the color of dust. Her eyes were softer but her skin was pocked with countless scars; like someone had burned, stabbed and cut the camouflage patterns of several different types of animals into her skin. Her fingers were long but a little crooked, like they had been broken and poorly set. Permanent bruised shadows now lived under her eyes.

“how many of these scars did you have before you fell into the underground?”

She smiled. A little twitch of her lip that only emphasized the permanent smirk a cut on the left corner of her lip had given her. “Aside from a few cigarette burns? None. I got them all here.”

He shook his head. “that can’t be right. resetting rolls things back, right? that’s how you have been evading death. you should be spotless.”

“So should you. But it seems our past lives are coming back to haunt us.” She rolled up her sleeves a little more to reveal more scars, then quickly hid them again. “It’s not that bad though. Only the worst of the worst bleed through. Most of this,” she gestured to the whole of her being, “was my own doing. I got them on my way here from the Ruins. Failed attempts at a reset or just the remnants of a close encounter with a monster. Usually I can heal them up without any complications but lately I have not had the same level of…cooperation that I had in the past when it comes to healing.”

Sans stared at her in disbelief. This just kept getting stranger and stranger. She was claiming she got most of these just by walking from the forest door to Snowdin? A lot of those scars looked pretty old.There had also been several key words in her explanation that did not make sense. “ok.” He said slowly, the bone ridge of his brow arced in skepticism. “so i guess my first question is: why? and my second question is: how long did it really take you to get here? ”

“It’s, um, it took a while. I don’t know how long but it’s been more than a week?” She gave him another apprising look, her previous cold confidence beginning to melt. “And I don’t mind telling you ‘why,’ but first you have to promise me you’re not going to stab me again if I tell you.”

He shrugged. “nah. i’m really not feeling up to doing anything violent right now.”

She didn’t seem to take his word for it but she appeared to be giving him the benefit of the doubt. She chewed on her lip and took in a slow breath before all the words started to run out of her like she had sprung a leak. “I sold my soul to a demon!”

“uhhh, what?”

“Her name is Chara. I thought I was going to die and she promised to save me if I let her come with me. She asked for my soul and I just kind of…gave it to her.” She laughed bitterly at herself. “Wasn’t really thinking clearly at the time. Didn’t really think the deal was going to be so literal, you know? I mean come on, it sounded like something out of a cheesy teen novel.”

“chara?” Sans echoed. The name seemed familiar. And not in a met-in-an-executed-timeline sort of way. “as in the king’s dead kid? the human kid?”

“Yes.” She agreed slowly, a suspicious glint in her eye. “She is more or less sharing my body right now and holding my soul hostage.” Then under her breath in a voice not quite hers she added: “And judging people's poor food choices.”

Sans’s words became clipped and impatient as her story sank in. “hate to break it to ya lady but humans can’t take other human-”

She jabbed an accusing finger at him. “Don’t you dare stab me again!”

He held up his hands in submission. Ah. Ok. So this was what he had attacked her for. He must have caught her lie during a critical moment near the end of a timeline. “i’m not.” He assured, thought he continued to give her an unamused look.

She began to whisper to herself again like she had back by the bridge out in the forest. “You look and sound ridiculous. I hope you realize this won’t end well for you. It never does.”

“Shut up.” She hissed, before turning her attention back to him. She winced like she was trying to drown out a harsh noise as she spoke. “Chara is not human anymore. It took me a while to figure out- which is stupid in hindsight since everyone else seemed to pick up on it. I don’t know all the details about how this happened to her- she keeps most of her past a secret from me. But what I do know is that her soul has decayed and something has kept her from moving on. “She’s just so, so empty. And that emptiness makes her mad. She wants to stop feeling. She wants to destroy everything so there is nothing left to feel.”

When she finally stopped to breathe he took a moment to try and mull over all of the ridiculous information she had just dumped in his lap. He had been expecting her to tell him she kept doing all this because she hated them. Or because it was fun. Or because she was trying to find something. In truth those reasons were still there in their more primal forms but he had expected these reasons to be her reasons. Not the reasons of some imagined voice in her head.

Then again this could help explain why someone would keep doing such horrible things over and over again. He felt his bones sinking into his seat in defeat. Her mind was broken.

***

“She uh, its, um-“ Rain rubbed at her face and made a frustrated sound. “God, I have been waiting so long to tell you all this and now I can’t even remember how to talk. Just, just believe me when I say that I’m trying, ok? She’s real. Chara is real. I was scared and angry and I let her do horrible things because it was easier to just look away and not ask questions- but I can’t afford to do that anymore. She’s not human anymore. But I am. I still am, Sans. And I want this to stop.”

There was a split second of hesitance before he said anything, but she noticed it. He leaned back in his seat. “heh. wow. that’s some crazy stuff. i mean, i’m not sure how much if it i believe but… pretty crazy.”

“Let me translate that for you: he thinks you are nuts. You are the stray Froot Loop lost in his box of Cheerios.”

He tapped on his ketchup bottle, making soft clinking sounds with his boney fingers before bring it up to the gap behind his teeth and pouring a generous amount into his mouth. Rain balked at this but said nothing.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Says the one who has been eating swampy sausages since forever.”

“Wait, does this mean that when we killed him was he bleeding ketchup? Oh my god, I think he was bleeding ketchup! I bet the lazy trash bag keeps a stash on him or something!”

“so then what-“

Rain started to laugh, hand flying up to her mouth and eyes going a little deranged. She didn’t know why she was laughing. She had been stressed out for so long and this just pushed her over the edge.

All those nightmares, all those times she had watched Chara kill Sans and she had literally felts the sins on her back and the blood on her hands- had it been all been ketchup?

Sans acted like her unexplained laughter didn’t make him uncomfortable. “what’s so funny?” He tried to look friendly. “come on, i’m always up for a good joke. or a bad one.”

Before she could think to stop herself she blurted out. “It’s ketchup! You bleed ketchup! All this time it’s been ketchup!”

His smile did not exactly slip away. He was a skeleton after all. But it did seem to become a rather strained, tacked-on sort of thing. He took another generous gulp from the bottle. When he set it back down again the lights in his eyes were gone.

The look ripped Rain from the present and threw her right back into the Judgment Hall. Her laughter died with the same sudden motion that it had started with.

“heh. you’d like that, wouldn’t you? would it make you feel better? is it easier to not to feel anything for us if we don’t bleed like you do when we die?”

Ah. Her voice wasn’t working again. Chara seemed to be holding it back for her own amusement. Several half sentences fell out of her mouth with all the grace and consistency of mud.

She wanted to apologize. She wanted to say that he was wrong. It had hurt to see the things she had seen. But she had gone through so many phases between then and now and it had left her tired and disoriented.

Denial, begging, pain, numbness, maniac amusement at the situation- she had cycled through it all until it had boiled down to one dull point: she existed. She was continuing forward just for the sake of…something. Anything. Nothing.

But when she had wanted to give up she would remember the bleached bone and the gold light on the bloodstained murals of the Judgment Hall and she would tell herself no. She could handle the sight of her blood but the sight of his? No.

To see herself transition from scattering dust to spilling blood so easily was horrible. To have it driven home that that’s what she had been doing the whole time and that leaving the Underground would not make the violence stop had been a sticking point. Whenever she thought about giving up she would look back on that moment and decide that whatever she was going through now was slightly better than going back to that.

And now she had learned that her symbol was probably fucking ketchup!

Unfortunately she couldn’t find the proper words needed explain that to him. Even if she did it would probably still be inappropriate. So she found herself stuck sitting there with her mouth hanging open as a mortifying slew of unfinished words choked her right there in front of him.

Sans eventually decided to show her a little mercy and let it go, if only so he would not have to listen to her continue to splutter. He waved away the subject with a sigh. “forgetaboutit. i don’t think I really want to hear any more of the grim details anyway.” His black grin twitched and the light slowly came back into his eyes. He took a deep breath and made himself settle down. “welp, its getting late. actually, it’s getting early. the lights are going to come on soon and i have been up all night. i got jobs i need to hurry up and get to if i don’t want to miss my breaks.

"listen, i don’t know how much of this demon nonsense i believe. i’d have to look into it before i’d say i believe you. but that look on your face, i know that look. i know that you really are trying. can’t say i know why you want to start now after so much time- but i want you to know i appreciate it.”

He got up and offered her a hand. She hesitated a moment in surprise before taking it. She waited for the whoopee cushion to go off but nothing was there. Her heart sank a little but she didn’t allow her disappointment to show. That’s ok. She didn’t really deserve it yet anyway.

When Sans saw the way her limbs shook with the effort of pulling herself up to her feet again he decided to comment on it. “sheesh lady, you look bone tired. you gonna be moving on or would you like a place to crash for a couple of hours? i got a shed with good insulation and i can grab you a sleeping bag if you want. hope you understand why offering you a room in the main house is kinda off the table.” He winked as he lead her back out into the cold, waving a hand over his shoulder and calling for Grillby to put the meal on his tab. He was back to acting like his casual old self again.

Rain smiled. It was a true smile. It felt like she was finally looping back around to something good again. She looked off in the direction she had planned to go, then glanced at the shed off in the distance. “Actually, yeah. I’d appreciate that. Thanks.” She hugged herself to combat the chill when a particularly cold breeze chased after them on their way to the shed.

She wanted to get the hell away from Papyrus as soon as possible but she was too worn out to go very far any time soon. Sitting in the booth had given her mussels enough time to seize up and the adrenaline was dying down now too. Besides, Chara wouldn’t be able to pull anything for a while. She hadn’t bothered telling Sans how many resets it had taken her to save his brother but they had been dying for quite a while and were both mentally and physically wiped out.

When Sans unlocked the door to the shed and shoved it open for her she couldn’t help but feel relief. Things were getting better. Technically she was back at square one but even that was a victory to be cherished after all she had gone through.

She tried to step inside but was stopped when something soft brush up against her arm. To her great surprise Sans had shed his coat and was offering it to her. “here. you look cold. may as well hang on to it just in case you still get chilly in there.”

She looked down at that worn blue coat with the kind of disbelief one would expect to see on the face of someone being handed a blank check. “You’re giving me this?”

“lending.”

She rubbed the soft white fur between her fingers. “Why?”

He shrugged, his gaze straying off towards the direction of the discarded fire poker and Dogaressa's abandoned cloak somewhere off in the snow-clogged distance. “you finally got rid of your old one.”