Just Cause
An Undertale Fanfiction
Chapter 6: Revenge?
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Looking For a Bad Time
Chapter 2: What The Killer Gave Up
Chapter 3: A Dangerous Path
Chapter 4: Fatal Mistakes
Chapter 5: Surrendered Memories
Chapter 6: Revenge? (you are here)
Chapter 7: The Person I Was
Chapter 8: Leaving Hope Behind
Chapter 9: Seeking the Source
Chapter 10: Uncertain Friendship
Chapter 11: Dating WTF?!
Chapter 12: I Don’t Know How to Feel
Chapter 13: Mutual Protection
Chapter 14: Spear of Torment
Chapter 15: Saved by Fire
Chapter 16: Welcome to the Show
Chapter 17: Nostalgia
Chapter 18: The Only Two I Thought I Had
Chapter 1: Looking For a Bad Time
Chapter 2: What The Killer Gave Up
Chapter 3: A Dangerous Path
Chapter 4: Fatal Mistakes
Chapter 5: Surrendered Memories
Chapter 6: Revenge? (you are here)
Chapter 7: The Person I Was
Chapter 8: Leaving Hope Behind
Chapter 9: Seeking the Source
Chapter 10: Uncertain Friendship
Chapter 11: Dating WTF?!
Chapter 12: I Don’t Know How to Feel
Chapter 13: Mutual Protection
Chapter 14: Spear of Torment
Chapter 15: Saved by Fire
Chapter 16: Welcome to the Show
Chapter 17: Nostalgia
Chapter 18: The Only Two I Thought I Had
Timeline 4
This doesn’t make sense.
Not many things about this day made sense. But unlike the human’s unnatural stats and inadequately-masked guilt, this anomaly did not give Sans hope.
Instead, sick terror was crawling through his rib cage, like an army of spiders scrambling in a mad cross between a stampede and a funeral procession.
A few feet away from him, the human lay panting on the ground, bloody and bruised but alive. Alive, despite his desperate efforts to force himself to keep attacking as their small, vulnerable-looking body began to break beneath his assault.
To keep on slamming them against the pillars, ceiling and floor, while the blood on their lips gave him strange flashbacks of a ketchup-smeared face smiling at him in the familiar warmth of Grillby’s.
Despite him having hit them with everything he could force himself to give, leaving him with no more than the barest flicker of magical energy with which to defend himself.
Despite the fact that the timeline chart said they should be dead.
They were starting to move their limbs again, that cursed, relentless determination dragging them back into motion in spite of their injuries. As their bloody, dust-sprinkled hands braced themselves on the floor, Sans frantically searched his memories of the timeline readings, struggling to figure out what had gone wrong.
It wasn’t supposed to end this soon. There were supposed to be thousands of refights after this. I shouldn’t have lost this early.
Did I screw up somehow? Did I hesitate when I could’ve attacked harder, or miss an opening I could’ve taken advantage of?
Have I doomed us all… or at least, made our doom come a bit ahead of schedule?
In a moment of bitter, hopeless mirth, the thought was almost enough to make him chuckle.
All this fear, all this hope, all this effort… just to delay something that, according to their readings, had as good as already happened.
Well… it’s not like I have anything better to do with my last few minutes. Besides, I still have one thing left to try. Is this really the thing that stalls them for so many attempts?
Time to find out.
A few quick, deep breaths supplied him with enough air to begin to quell his panting, and Sans forced himself to sound confident as he spoke. “All right. That’s it. It’s time for my special attack. Are you ready?
“Here goes nothing.”
Tension raced through the human’s body and they staggered desperately to their feet, swaying and staggering on the verge of collapse as they braced themselves for another violent salvo. Alarm was flashing in their eyes, but they looked like they were closer to passing out than panicking.
Too bad Sans felt the same way.
The seconds seemed to stretch like hours, hovering in the dark, wary space that separated the two exhausted warriors, and Sans watched with a weary echo of amusement as confusion began to seep into his opponent’s expression.
“Yup. That’s right.”
His voice caused their face to snap toward him, halting the glances they’d begun to cast in search of an escape route. “It’s literally nothing. And it’s not going to be anything, either. Heh heh heh… ya get it?”
From the slowly dawning expression on their face, it looked like they did. Surprise, understanding, admiration…
No. Surely not.
That look on their face… it almost looks like... fondness?
If looks could speak, that one would say something like “that’s such a Sans thing to do”. Only without the hilarious screaming Papyrus would use to say it.
I wonder… is it possible to be bored enough that you can decide to kill someone just to see what happens, even if you still like them?
If that’s their idea of liking someone, I’ll pass.
They were looking around again, and this time, their glance fell on the dagger that his final series of blue attacks had knocked out of their hand. It was lying just outside the battle box, and he didn’t like the way they were staring at it.
Time to reclaim their attention. “I know I can’t beat you. One of your turns... you're just gonna kill me.”
Their eyes fell, as if hearing their intentions put into words stung in a way that the battle itself had somehow failed to.
Well, too bad, kid. Words are all we have left now.
“So, uh. I've decided... it's not gonna BE your turn. Ever. I'm just gonna keep having MY turn until you give up. Even if it means we have to stand here until the end of time. Capiche?”
Wow. He’d meant to catch them off guard, but he’s never expected that his threat would actually scare them. And yet, fear was flooding across their face, and this time their hasty side-to-side glance bordered on frantic.
Are you really that scared of being bored? Or…
The image of the timeline chart flickered through his mind again, and this time it was his turn to feel uneasiness trickling through his nonexistent gut. If they’re the cause of that sudden ending, we should be fine as long as they stay here.
But if they aren’t…
They were making a dash for the knife now, and Sans broke his train of thought for long enough to teleport them back to the center of the battle box.
If they AREN’T the cause of that… are they scared I’m going to keep them here long enough for the end to happen?
Am I making a mistake?
Time to do more face-reading.
“You'll get bored here. If you haven't gotten bored already, I mean. And then, you'll finally quit.”
Annoyance flashed across their face, as if the insinuation that boredom would make them quit offended them somehow. Are you mad because I figured out that you’re vulnerable to boredom, because you think you’re too tough to be thwarted by boredom, or because I accused you of having a pettier reason than you really have?
“I know your type,” he continued, forcing himself to focus on the human’s face even as a presence somewhere behind him made his spine crawl.
Probably the flower responsible for him knowing their type. Not important right now. He hoped.
“You're, uh, very determined, aren't you? You'll never give up, even if there's, uh... absolutely no benefit to persevering whatsoever. If I can make that clear.”
Another teleport, and the mask was back, as solid as it was translucent. The facade that tried to silence its own unspoken scream that there was something he was missing, and that they completely refused to tell him what it was.
“No matter what, you'll just keep going. Not out of any desire for good or evil... but just because you think you can. And because you ‘can’... you ‘have to’.”
That silent scream was getting louder, and the human was moving toward the dagger again, studiously ignoring him as they focused on the task at hand.
Ping.
This time, when they reappeared in the center of the box, they didn’t even break stride. The sight sent alarm flashing through Sans’ soul, and this time, when he teleported them back, he made a note of how much energy it took and now much he had left.
He didn’t like what he felt.
“But now, you’ve reached the end,” he pointed out, desperately trying to sound confident in a claim that he knew was a bluff. “There is nothing left for you now. So, uh, in my personal opinion…” Yeah, THAT sounded convincing. “The most ‘determined’ thing you can do here? Is to, uh, completely give up. And…”
He hadn’t meant to yawn. But it felt like his energy was physically leaking from his bones, and dizzy darkness circled him like a blanket, inviting him to sink into it. “…do literally anything else,” he concluded, silently begging them to comply.
Please give up. Or pass out. Preferably before I do.
Please, do anything but keep going for that dagger.
I can’t keep this up.
Another attempt, another teleportation. The human was looking frustrated now, and the last fading flicker of hope in Sans’ mind silently begged them to get annoyed enough to do something less aggravating with their time.
Step, step, step, ping…
Their movements had turned into a steady march, eerie and inexorable despite the slight limp that marred their gait, and Sans began to sway as he struggled to stay standing.
Stop, stop, please stop…
He didn’t know when his eyelids fell shut.
Didn’t know when the human pressed their hands against the battle box, hard enough to push it first to the dagger and then toward him.
His brief lapse from consciousness only ended when the sound of footsteps stopped far too close to him, and the livid flare of a crimson soul blazed through the bone sheaths that covered his eye sockets.
Terror exploded through every inch of his being, and his eyes flew open, wide with alarm as the shining blade descended.
Even as his screaming instincts flung him away from the human, the sound of the impact sent shock reeling through his body. Red trailed from the blade in the wake of the strike, and for a moment, all Sans could do was stare at his opponent in silent, stunned bewilderment.
Kid… why?!
Coils of vermilion licked the air like tongues of flame, flickering on the torn edges of a bisected soul.
A bisected, broken human soul.
Glowing spiderwebs ran through the destroyed heart shape like cracks in a jar of molten lava, the light of the human’s formidable power shining brighter than ever as the culmination of their being began to shatter.
The dagger fell from their hand, clattering on the hard tile floor, and with an effort, Sans lifted his gaze from the weapon and looked the human in the eye.
I don’t understand. Why did you do that?
And why… are you smiling?
It wasn’t like the smile they’d given him earlier. Not a clearly fake attempt to look more gleeful than they were.
Instead, this expression looked almost… peaceful. Happy. Relieved.
Like a brief reprieve from a burden that would shatter along with their soul.
For an instant, questions flashed through Sans’ mind, reeling before his mental eyes like pages in a hurricane.
Then, as the world began to go dark, a few of them finally crystallized, a mocking flash of clarity just before his memory of it vanished.
So this is why the battle takes so long. Do they do this every time?
If so, I wonder what finally makes them stop.
~*~*~*~
“Golly, Frisk! You pretty much had him!”
He hadn’t expected them to be happy about it. At least here, in the privacy of the save screen, they didn’t have to pretend.
But he hadn’t expected them to ignore him, either.
As the human’s silence stretched on, Flowey angle his head sideways, curiosity dragging the words from his mouth even as a corner of his mind questioned whether or not he should say them. “For a moment there, I really thought you were going to take a swing at him. I mean, he really smashed you up.”
“Heh.” The sound was soft and lifeless, as if their voice and emotions were making a halfhearted attempt to drag themselves back from the dead.
And yet, their face held something that couldn’t quite be called a smile, but was perhaps the bitter echo of one: the same sad, humorless mirth that had fueled Sans’ wisecracking.
“Revenge, Flowey?”
A trickle of disdain flowed into Frisk’s voice like poison from a tainted vial, and the edge of bitterness grew in their tone as they finally lifted their head to face him. “Have you forgotten?”
They turned away, but even as the glimmer of their save point appeared in front of them, their head craned back to glance over their shoulder, and their half-flat tone was dark with resentment.
“Revenge is part of how we ended up here.”
~*~*~*~
No matter how many times he saw it, Sans couldn’t help but find it strange to see his final days forecasted like this. Written in black and livid red on a stark white background, like charcoal and blood streaked across snow.
Around six days of combat down. Roughly eighteen to go. It was hard to wrap his head around; he’d heard Undyne talk about glorious historical battles that lasted weeks, but the mere thought of actually engaging in one sent a premonition of exhaustion trickling through his bones.
“Hey, Alphys?”
The lizard tore her face away from the monitor that followed the human’s progress through the tunnels in Asgore’s basement. “Y-yes?”
“How many days does it take to exhaust a human?”
“Huh? Oh, uh… I’m not sure.”
“Heh. I wish that didn’t make two of us.”
He shrugged it off with a roll of his narrow shoulders, then returned his focus to the question at hand. “I mean, from the human’s perspective, we’ve probably been fighting for almost a week. I can’t remember the previous fights, but they remember all of them, right?”
“Th-theoretically, yes.”
“So that’s about six days of trying to kill me. Huh. Guess I’m better at my job than I thought. Either that, or they were tired before our fight even started, and they don’t have the energy to bring their A game to the table. Either way, you’d think they’d be starting to get bored.”
“Yeah, you… you’d think…”
And yet, if the chart spoke true, the determination that had carried them through almost a week of boredom would continue to drive them forward for thrice that long again.
The zigzags, which had started out short, looked like they were going to peak at approximately fourteen minutes. After that, they began growing shorter, only for the start of the zigzags to move forward a bit, and the lengthening and shortening to begin all over again.
I wonder if they found a way to skip the pre-battle stroll through Asgore’s house, and start going back to the start of our battle when they die. It’s the only part of these readings I can find an explanation for.
Speaking of the battle, the human was entering the Last Corridor.
Time to get back to work.
~*~*~*~
Another fourteen-minute fight. Just like the chart predicted.
If only Papyrus could see him now. Fighting and timing himself at the same time. The younger skeleton would probably be impressed.
It would totally ruin his lazy persona.
Papyrus must never know.
A circle of blasters sprang into being, demonic-looking skull heads appearing and firing at a fierce, desperate pace, and the battered young human rushed to stay ahead of them.
If Sans could’ve activated them all simultaneously, the battle would’ve been his. But as it was, his exhausted soul was struggling just to keep producing attacks, and generating them one after another was the best he could do.
Please die, please die, please die, please die… I can’t believe I’m saying this to a preteen kid, but PLEASE hurry up and die…
He couldn’t tell if they were going to or not. They were racing frantically in circles, but the brief glimpses he caught of their face didn’t speak of panic. Instead, they warned of a fierce resolve, of a person bracing themselves to do something drastic.
I have a bad feeling ab-AAAAAAAH!
One moment, his fragile body was shielded by a torrent of searing blaster fire and the wall of the battle box.
The next, a flash of flying color exploded through the beams, careening into the magic barrier with enough force to ram it into motion.
The ethereal wall slid past him, leaving him suddenly exposed in the middle of his turn, and he had just enough time to gasp before his shock and alarm were violently drowned in a flood of searing pain.
The sound of a blade crunching through bone seemed to reach him after a delay, as if his senses were in too much shock to process everything at once. The colors on his opponent’s shirt blurred before his eyes, blue and pink and far too close, and part of him tried to shrink away even as the rest of him froze.
A haze of agony enveloped his mind, and it took a few moments for Sans to realize that the blow had thrown him onto his pelvis, leaving him slumped on the hard, cold floor.
Dizziness swept through his senses, and for a few eternally stretched seconds, all he could do was press a hand to his ribs as his body heaved in a cough, forcing a spatter of ketchup through his permanently clenched teeth.
Gh… they ripped right through the whoopee cushion… and through all one of my HP…
No. This can’t be right.
Of course it wasn’t; nothing about the situation was right. People shouldn’t be dead, he shouldn’t be dying, and it shouldn’t have happened at the hands of someone who might, in another timeline, have been… or pretended to be… a friend.
And even if it was going to happen, it shouldn’t have happened yet.
The realization struck him like a hammer to the wounded chest, and Sans felt his swiftly blurring eye sockets grow wider.
This can’t be the end of it. Unless our readings are wrong, something stalls or kills the kid after this; the zigzags keep going for three more weeks, and I don’t think any of them lasted long enough for the human to reach and kill Asgore.
Did something change? Is backup coming? Or…
A chill shivered through his body, groping at his injured bones like cold, invasive hands. Are they planning to go back and do this again, of their own accord? Is this just the beginning of them killing me over and over again, for several weeks on end?
Why?! Did I do something in another timeline that made them hate me this much?
The idea hurt more than it should have. As if some part of him remembered a reason to care what this murderer thought of him.
How did it come to this? What was our relationship like in past timelines? Was it something I said? Something I did... or didn’t do?
His bones were starting to soften, his willpower losing its desperate grip on his ruined body. Any second now, he’d turn into dust, and there would be nothing left between this deadly immortal and everything they’d destroy.
No… not nothing. If their hatred of him would make them stay in this room to kill him again, instead of letting them move on… it was sickening, but it was better than what would happen if they kept going.
With a head-spinning effort, Sans forced himself to his feet, refusing to sway even as his femurs threatened to dissolve beneath him.
It probably doesn’t matter what I say right now. Maybe it never did. But if there’s a chance that they’re doing this just to satisfy their own curiosity, I might as well satisfy mine.
Prying his hands away from his wound, he spread them in a wide shrug, staring at his murderer’s downturned eyes and mocking them with one final wink. “Welp. I’m going to Grillby’s.”
The human’s head snapped up to face him, confusion flashing in a face that fought to conceal the longing and agony that burned behind their eyes.
So they DO have memories tied to that place. Maybe even good ones.
Did we hang out there in another timeline? Were we friends?
Were they pretending?
Did something change?
The world was starting to go dim, his vision distorting eerily as the inside of his skull began to disintegrate. The flicker of light on a camera lens caught the corner of his eye, and Sans turned away from his killer, forcing his trembling legs to work as he slowly limped away.
Keep it together, Sans. Don’t die in front of Alphys. Don’t make them… don’t…
Them?
Confusion hit in a dizzy wave, and with the last of his fading mental power, Sans reached for that final unexpected clue.
If it was purely for Alphys, I could understand it, but… why?
Why do I have this strange compulsion not to die in front of the kid?
He couldn’t tell. Couldn’t think. The world was starting to go white, and somewhere in the distance, a familiar figure wavered into being.
“Papyrus?” Right… I was going to Grillby’s. “Do you… want anything?”
~*~*~*~
Trust Sans to walk off like that.
As the skeleton limped out of Frisk’s line of vision, Flowey shook his head. He never did like to let people see him vulnerable, or to make them worry.
And in the timelines when I managed to kill him, he never wanted to give me the satisfaction of watching him die.
The beaten warrior was faltering now, his legs trembling as he struggled to take those last few steps.
Then his right tibia gave out, and by the time the rest of his body hit the floor, it had already dissolved into dust.
“Sans…”
A pained, uncertain whimper rose in the eerily still air, like the hand of a frightened child reaching for their dead parent. As the clatter of a dagger hitting the tile rang through the hall, the flower squeezed his eyes shut. Hoo, boy. This is gonna be bad.
“Sans?”
The human’s voice was starting to rise, fear and denial mixing into a questioning cry of pain. “SA-”
A vine lashed up from the ground, coiling around their leg and jolting their frantic dash to a halt. The startled child pitched forward, nearly planting their face on the tile, and the quick intervention of two more tendrils narrowly saved them from crashing to the floor.
“Let go! Flowey, I have to-”
“No.” The flower’s reply was as firm as his grasp, wrapping around the distraught young human with unyielding resolve. “You don’t need to go and look at that.”
“But he wasn’t dusted; he might be-”
“He’s dead.”
It should have been a relief. Instead, the words seemed to tear a hole in their chest.
Their hands and lips began to tremble, and a faint whimper trickled free with every shallow gasp. Their whole body seemed to be seizing up, their head strained toward the door through which Sans had vanished, and Flowey wondered how long it would take before those soft, agonized whines turned into a full-blown wail.
“Frisk, look at me. You have to focus. Frisk, focus on my voice!”
It took far too many seconds for his voice to register, but Frisk’s eyes finally turned toward Flowey, flashing in the early stages of a panic attack.
This will probably just make it worse, but it has to be said. “Frisk, you can’t break down on me here. This isn’t the final time, remember? He’ll be alive again in a few seconds, and then… you know what comes next.”
Now, at last, their straining body collapsed, slumping into the grip of his vines as if their soul had left them. A moan that bordered on a wail rose from their heaving chest, and Flowey carefully stroked their back as they began to sob.
“It’s just for a little while,” he reminded them, mimicking the tone his mother had used whenever he tripped and fell. “This isn’t going to last forever. But if you don’t go back and do it again, then everything you’ve done so far was for nothing.”
The reminder drew a whimper and a shallow, lifeless nod. No matter how they might collapse, Flowey knew that sooner or later, they would always get back up.
“I know.” The human’s answer was somewhere between a moan and a sob. “I know, it just… it hurts so much. This is so much worse than dying, and it… Flowey… this isn’t who I wanted to be.”
“I know.” The echoes of timelines long erased flickered through his mind, images of this very room flashing in his memory, and Flowey let his eyes fall closed. “I know.”
This doesn’t make sense.
Not many things about this day made sense. But unlike the human’s unnatural stats and inadequately-masked guilt, this anomaly did not give Sans hope.
Instead, sick terror was crawling through his rib cage, like an army of spiders scrambling in a mad cross between a stampede and a funeral procession.
A few feet away from him, the human lay panting on the ground, bloody and bruised but alive. Alive, despite his desperate efforts to force himself to keep attacking as their small, vulnerable-looking body began to break beneath his assault.
To keep on slamming them against the pillars, ceiling and floor, while the blood on their lips gave him strange flashbacks of a ketchup-smeared face smiling at him in the familiar warmth of Grillby’s.
Despite him having hit them with everything he could force himself to give, leaving him with no more than the barest flicker of magical energy with which to defend himself.
Despite the fact that the timeline chart said they should be dead.
They were starting to move their limbs again, that cursed, relentless determination dragging them back into motion in spite of their injuries. As their bloody, dust-sprinkled hands braced themselves on the floor, Sans frantically searched his memories of the timeline readings, struggling to figure out what had gone wrong.
It wasn’t supposed to end this soon. There were supposed to be thousands of refights after this. I shouldn’t have lost this early.
Did I screw up somehow? Did I hesitate when I could’ve attacked harder, or miss an opening I could’ve taken advantage of?
Have I doomed us all… or at least, made our doom come a bit ahead of schedule?
In a moment of bitter, hopeless mirth, the thought was almost enough to make him chuckle.
All this fear, all this hope, all this effort… just to delay something that, according to their readings, had as good as already happened.
Well… it’s not like I have anything better to do with my last few minutes. Besides, I still have one thing left to try. Is this really the thing that stalls them for so many attempts?
Time to find out.
A few quick, deep breaths supplied him with enough air to begin to quell his panting, and Sans forced himself to sound confident as he spoke. “All right. That’s it. It’s time for my special attack. Are you ready?
“Here goes nothing.”
Tension raced through the human’s body and they staggered desperately to their feet, swaying and staggering on the verge of collapse as they braced themselves for another violent salvo. Alarm was flashing in their eyes, but they looked like they were closer to passing out than panicking.
Too bad Sans felt the same way.
The seconds seemed to stretch like hours, hovering in the dark, wary space that separated the two exhausted warriors, and Sans watched with a weary echo of amusement as confusion began to seep into his opponent’s expression.
“Yup. That’s right.”
His voice caused their face to snap toward him, halting the glances they’d begun to cast in search of an escape route. “It’s literally nothing. And it’s not going to be anything, either. Heh heh heh… ya get it?”
From the slowly dawning expression on their face, it looked like they did. Surprise, understanding, admiration…
No. Surely not.
That look on their face… it almost looks like... fondness?
If looks could speak, that one would say something like “that’s such a Sans thing to do”. Only without the hilarious screaming Papyrus would use to say it.
I wonder… is it possible to be bored enough that you can decide to kill someone just to see what happens, even if you still like them?
If that’s their idea of liking someone, I’ll pass.
They were looking around again, and this time, their glance fell on the dagger that his final series of blue attacks had knocked out of their hand. It was lying just outside the battle box, and he didn’t like the way they were staring at it.
Time to reclaim their attention. “I know I can’t beat you. One of your turns... you're just gonna kill me.”
Their eyes fell, as if hearing their intentions put into words stung in a way that the battle itself had somehow failed to.
Well, too bad, kid. Words are all we have left now.
“So, uh. I've decided... it's not gonna BE your turn. Ever. I'm just gonna keep having MY turn until you give up. Even if it means we have to stand here until the end of time. Capiche?”
Wow. He’d meant to catch them off guard, but he’s never expected that his threat would actually scare them. And yet, fear was flooding across their face, and this time their hasty side-to-side glance bordered on frantic.
Are you really that scared of being bored? Or…
The image of the timeline chart flickered through his mind again, and this time it was his turn to feel uneasiness trickling through his nonexistent gut. If they’re the cause of that sudden ending, we should be fine as long as they stay here.
But if they aren’t…
They were making a dash for the knife now, and Sans broke his train of thought for long enough to teleport them back to the center of the battle box.
If they AREN’T the cause of that… are they scared I’m going to keep them here long enough for the end to happen?
Am I making a mistake?
Time to do more face-reading.
“You'll get bored here. If you haven't gotten bored already, I mean. And then, you'll finally quit.”
Annoyance flashed across their face, as if the insinuation that boredom would make them quit offended them somehow. Are you mad because I figured out that you’re vulnerable to boredom, because you think you’re too tough to be thwarted by boredom, or because I accused you of having a pettier reason than you really have?
“I know your type,” he continued, forcing himself to focus on the human’s face even as a presence somewhere behind him made his spine crawl.
Probably the flower responsible for him knowing their type. Not important right now. He hoped.
“You're, uh, very determined, aren't you? You'll never give up, even if there's, uh... absolutely no benefit to persevering whatsoever. If I can make that clear.”
Another teleport, and the mask was back, as solid as it was translucent. The facade that tried to silence its own unspoken scream that there was something he was missing, and that they completely refused to tell him what it was.
“No matter what, you'll just keep going. Not out of any desire for good or evil... but just because you think you can. And because you ‘can’... you ‘have to’.”
That silent scream was getting louder, and the human was moving toward the dagger again, studiously ignoring him as they focused on the task at hand.
Ping.
This time, when they reappeared in the center of the box, they didn’t even break stride. The sight sent alarm flashing through Sans’ soul, and this time, when he teleported them back, he made a note of how much energy it took and now much he had left.
He didn’t like what he felt.
“But now, you’ve reached the end,” he pointed out, desperately trying to sound confident in a claim that he knew was a bluff. “There is nothing left for you now. So, uh, in my personal opinion…” Yeah, THAT sounded convincing. “The most ‘determined’ thing you can do here? Is to, uh, completely give up. And…”
He hadn’t meant to yawn. But it felt like his energy was physically leaking from his bones, and dizzy darkness circled him like a blanket, inviting him to sink into it. “…do literally anything else,” he concluded, silently begging them to comply.
Please give up. Or pass out. Preferably before I do.
Please, do anything but keep going for that dagger.
I can’t keep this up.
Another attempt, another teleportation. The human was looking frustrated now, and the last fading flicker of hope in Sans’ mind silently begged them to get annoyed enough to do something less aggravating with their time.
Step, step, step, ping…
Their movements had turned into a steady march, eerie and inexorable despite the slight limp that marred their gait, and Sans began to sway as he struggled to stay standing.
Stop, stop, please stop…
He didn’t know when his eyelids fell shut.
Didn’t know when the human pressed their hands against the battle box, hard enough to push it first to the dagger and then toward him.
His brief lapse from consciousness only ended when the sound of footsteps stopped far too close to him, and the livid flare of a crimson soul blazed through the bone sheaths that covered his eye sockets.
Terror exploded through every inch of his being, and his eyes flew open, wide with alarm as the shining blade descended.
Even as his screaming instincts flung him away from the human, the sound of the impact sent shock reeling through his body. Red trailed from the blade in the wake of the strike, and for a moment, all Sans could do was stare at his opponent in silent, stunned bewilderment.
Kid… why?!
Coils of vermilion licked the air like tongues of flame, flickering on the torn edges of a bisected soul.
A bisected, broken human soul.
Glowing spiderwebs ran through the destroyed heart shape like cracks in a jar of molten lava, the light of the human’s formidable power shining brighter than ever as the culmination of their being began to shatter.
The dagger fell from their hand, clattering on the hard tile floor, and with an effort, Sans lifted his gaze from the weapon and looked the human in the eye.
I don’t understand. Why did you do that?
And why… are you smiling?
It wasn’t like the smile they’d given him earlier. Not a clearly fake attempt to look more gleeful than they were.
Instead, this expression looked almost… peaceful. Happy. Relieved.
Like a brief reprieve from a burden that would shatter along with their soul.
For an instant, questions flashed through Sans’ mind, reeling before his mental eyes like pages in a hurricane.
Then, as the world began to go dark, a few of them finally crystallized, a mocking flash of clarity just before his memory of it vanished.
So this is why the battle takes so long. Do they do this every time?
If so, I wonder what finally makes them stop.
~*~*~*~
“Golly, Frisk! You pretty much had him!”
He hadn’t expected them to be happy about it. At least here, in the privacy of the save screen, they didn’t have to pretend.
But he hadn’t expected them to ignore him, either.
As the human’s silence stretched on, Flowey angle his head sideways, curiosity dragging the words from his mouth even as a corner of his mind questioned whether or not he should say them. “For a moment there, I really thought you were going to take a swing at him. I mean, he really smashed you up.”
“Heh.” The sound was soft and lifeless, as if their voice and emotions were making a halfhearted attempt to drag themselves back from the dead.
And yet, their face held something that couldn’t quite be called a smile, but was perhaps the bitter echo of one: the same sad, humorless mirth that had fueled Sans’ wisecracking.
“Revenge, Flowey?”
A trickle of disdain flowed into Frisk’s voice like poison from a tainted vial, and the edge of bitterness grew in their tone as they finally lifted their head to face him. “Have you forgotten?”
They turned away, but even as the glimmer of their save point appeared in front of them, their head craned back to glance over their shoulder, and their half-flat tone was dark with resentment.
“Revenge is part of how we ended up here.”
~*~*~*~
No matter how many times he saw it, Sans couldn’t help but find it strange to see his final days forecasted like this. Written in black and livid red on a stark white background, like charcoal and blood streaked across snow.
Around six days of combat down. Roughly eighteen to go. It was hard to wrap his head around; he’d heard Undyne talk about glorious historical battles that lasted weeks, but the mere thought of actually engaging in one sent a premonition of exhaustion trickling through his bones.
“Hey, Alphys?”
The lizard tore her face away from the monitor that followed the human’s progress through the tunnels in Asgore’s basement. “Y-yes?”
“How many days does it take to exhaust a human?”
“Huh? Oh, uh… I’m not sure.”
“Heh. I wish that didn’t make two of us.”
He shrugged it off with a roll of his narrow shoulders, then returned his focus to the question at hand. “I mean, from the human’s perspective, we’ve probably been fighting for almost a week. I can’t remember the previous fights, but they remember all of them, right?”
“Th-theoretically, yes.”
“So that’s about six days of trying to kill me. Huh. Guess I’m better at my job than I thought. Either that, or they were tired before our fight even started, and they don’t have the energy to bring their A game to the table. Either way, you’d think they’d be starting to get bored.”
“Yeah, you… you’d think…”
And yet, if the chart spoke true, the determination that had carried them through almost a week of boredom would continue to drive them forward for thrice that long again.
The zigzags, which had started out short, looked like they were going to peak at approximately fourteen minutes. After that, they began growing shorter, only for the start of the zigzags to move forward a bit, and the lengthening and shortening to begin all over again.
I wonder if they found a way to skip the pre-battle stroll through Asgore’s house, and start going back to the start of our battle when they die. It’s the only part of these readings I can find an explanation for.
Speaking of the battle, the human was entering the Last Corridor.
Time to get back to work.
~*~*~*~
Another fourteen-minute fight. Just like the chart predicted.
If only Papyrus could see him now. Fighting and timing himself at the same time. The younger skeleton would probably be impressed.
It would totally ruin his lazy persona.
Papyrus must never know.
A circle of blasters sprang into being, demonic-looking skull heads appearing and firing at a fierce, desperate pace, and the battered young human rushed to stay ahead of them.
If Sans could’ve activated them all simultaneously, the battle would’ve been his. But as it was, his exhausted soul was struggling just to keep producing attacks, and generating them one after another was the best he could do.
Please die, please die, please die, please die… I can’t believe I’m saying this to a preteen kid, but PLEASE hurry up and die…
He couldn’t tell if they were going to or not. They were racing frantically in circles, but the brief glimpses he caught of their face didn’t speak of panic. Instead, they warned of a fierce resolve, of a person bracing themselves to do something drastic.
I have a bad feeling ab-AAAAAAAH!
One moment, his fragile body was shielded by a torrent of searing blaster fire and the wall of the battle box.
The next, a flash of flying color exploded through the beams, careening into the magic barrier with enough force to ram it into motion.
The ethereal wall slid past him, leaving him suddenly exposed in the middle of his turn, and he had just enough time to gasp before his shock and alarm were violently drowned in a flood of searing pain.
The sound of a blade crunching through bone seemed to reach him after a delay, as if his senses were in too much shock to process everything at once. The colors on his opponent’s shirt blurred before his eyes, blue and pink and far too close, and part of him tried to shrink away even as the rest of him froze.
A haze of agony enveloped his mind, and it took a few moments for Sans to realize that the blow had thrown him onto his pelvis, leaving him slumped on the hard, cold floor.
Dizziness swept through his senses, and for a few eternally stretched seconds, all he could do was press a hand to his ribs as his body heaved in a cough, forcing a spatter of ketchup through his permanently clenched teeth.
Gh… they ripped right through the whoopee cushion… and through all one of my HP…
No. This can’t be right.
Of course it wasn’t; nothing about the situation was right. People shouldn’t be dead, he shouldn’t be dying, and it shouldn’t have happened at the hands of someone who might, in another timeline, have been… or pretended to be… a friend.
And even if it was going to happen, it shouldn’t have happened yet.
The realization struck him like a hammer to the wounded chest, and Sans felt his swiftly blurring eye sockets grow wider.
This can’t be the end of it. Unless our readings are wrong, something stalls or kills the kid after this; the zigzags keep going for three more weeks, and I don’t think any of them lasted long enough for the human to reach and kill Asgore.
Did something change? Is backup coming? Or…
A chill shivered through his body, groping at his injured bones like cold, invasive hands. Are they planning to go back and do this again, of their own accord? Is this just the beginning of them killing me over and over again, for several weeks on end?
Why?! Did I do something in another timeline that made them hate me this much?
The idea hurt more than it should have. As if some part of him remembered a reason to care what this murderer thought of him.
How did it come to this? What was our relationship like in past timelines? Was it something I said? Something I did... or didn’t do?
His bones were starting to soften, his willpower losing its desperate grip on his ruined body. Any second now, he’d turn into dust, and there would be nothing left between this deadly immortal and everything they’d destroy.
No… not nothing. If their hatred of him would make them stay in this room to kill him again, instead of letting them move on… it was sickening, but it was better than what would happen if they kept going.
With a head-spinning effort, Sans forced himself to his feet, refusing to sway even as his femurs threatened to dissolve beneath him.
It probably doesn’t matter what I say right now. Maybe it never did. But if there’s a chance that they’re doing this just to satisfy their own curiosity, I might as well satisfy mine.
Prying his hands away from his wound, he spread them in a wide shrug, staring at his murderer’s downturned eyes and mocking them with one final wink. “Welp. I’m going to Grillby’s.”
The human’s head snapped up to face him, confusion flashing in a face that fought to conceal the longing and agony that burned behind their eyes.
So they DO have memories tied to that place. Maybe even good ones.
Did we hang out there in another timeline? Were we friends?
Were they pretending?
Did something change?
The world was starting to go dim, his vision distorting eerily as the inside of his skull began to disintegrate. The flicker of light on a camera lens caught the corner of his eye, and Sans turned away from his killer, forcing his trembling legs to work as he slowly limped away.
Keep it together, Sans. Don’t die in front of Alphys. Don’t make them… don’t…
Them?
Confusion hit in a dizzy wave, and with the last of his fading mental power, Sans reached for that final unexpected clue.
If it was purely for Alphys, I could understand it, but… why?
Why do I have this strange compulsion not to die in front of the kid?
He couldn’t tell. Couldn’t think. The world was starting to go white, and somewhere in the distance, a familiar figure wavered into being.
“Papyrus?” Right… I was going to Grillby’s. “Do you… want anything?”
~*~*~*~
Trust Sans to walk off like that.
As the skeleton limped out of Frisk’s line of vision, Flowey shook his head. He never did like to let people see him vulnerable, or to make them worry.
And in the timelines when I managed to kill him, he never wanted to give me the satisfaction of watching him die.
The beaten warrior was faltering now, his legs trembling as he struggled to take those last few steps.
Then his right tibia gave out, and by the time the rest of his body hit the floor, it had already dissolved into dust.
“Sans…”
A pained, uncertain whimper rose in the eerily still air, like the hand of a frightened child reaching for their dead parent. As the clatter of a dagger hitting the tile rang through the hall, the flower squeezed his eyes shut. Hoo, boy. This is gonna be bad.
“Sans?”
The human’s voice was starting to rise, fear and denial mixing into a questioning cry of pain. “SA-”
A vine lashed up from the ground, coiling around their leg and jolting their frantic dash to a halt. The startled child pitched forward, nearly planting their face on the tile, and the quick intervention of two more tendrils narrowly saved them from crashing to the floor.
“Let go! Flowey, I have to-”
“No.” The flower’s reply was as firm as his grasp, wrapping around the distraught young human with unyielding resolve. “You don’t need to go and look at that.”
“But he wasn’t dusted; he might be-”
“He’s dead.”
It should have been a relief. Instead, the words seemed to tear a hole in their chest.
Their hands and lips began to tremble, and a faint whimper trickled free with every shallow gasp. Their whole body seemed to be seizing up, their head strained toward the door through which Sans had vanished, and Flowey wondered how long it would take before those soft, agonized whines turned into a full-blown wail.
“Frisk, look at me. You have to focus. Frisk, focus on my voice!”
It took far too many seconds for his voice to register, but Frisk’s eyes finally turned toward Flowey, flashing in the early stages of a panic attack.
This will probably just make it worse, but it has to be said. “Frisk, you can’t break down on me here. This isn’t the final time, remember? He’ll be alive again in a few seconds, and then… you know what comes next.”
Now, at last, their straining body collapsed, slumping into the grip of his vines as if their soul had left them. A moan that bordered on a wail rose from their heaving chest, and Flowey carefully stroked their back as they began to sob.
“It’s just for a little while,” he reminded them, mimicking the tone his mother had used whenever he tripped and fell. “This isn’t going to last forever. But if you don’t go back and do it again, then everything you’ve done so far was for nothing.”
The reminder drew a whimper and a shallow, lifeless nod. No matter how they might collapse, Flowey knew that sooner or later, they would always get back up.
“I know.” The human’s answer was somewhere between a moan and a sob. “I know, it just… it hurts so much. This is so much worse than dying, and it… Flowey… this isn’t who I wanted to be.”
“I know.” The echoes of timelines long erased flickered through his mind, images of this very room flashing in his memory, and Flowey let his eyes fall closed. “I know.”
Author's note:
If you want to read my original novels, you can find them here.
If you'd like to help me publish new chapters faster, please consider supporting me on Patreon or Ko-fi so I can spend more time writing stories and less time doing other things to make money.
Author's note:
If you want to read my original novels, you can find them here.
If you'd like to help me publish new chapters faster, please consider supporting me on Patreon or Ko-fi so I can spend more time writing stories and less time doing other things to make money.