Chapter Text
Part 1
Sans the skeleton paced circles in a hall of gold, his slippers scuffing over the checkered tile. Dust motes floated about his shoulders as he passed beneath a procession of stained-glass windows. It was warm in the hall, but Sans couldn’t feel it. He pinned his jacket close to his body and buried his neck into his collar. In his right hand, he clutched a pocket watch, rolling it end over end with a compulsive repetition. From time to time he would turn toward the end of the hall and stare at the darkened doorway that led beyond.
soon.
He lifted the watch up to an amber beam of light, noting its dull gleam and ugly shape. The watch was a gunmetal gray disc, held together with assorted rivets and screws. No adornment diffused its inelegance. It had no faceplate, no chain, no filigree, no winding stem; not even hands or an electronic display, just a four-digit number like a car’s odometer.
0005.
one for each finger, he thought.
A whisper of air played down the length of the hall. It seemed that the kid had finally come; for the sixth time. He emerged from the shadowed doorway, caked in dust and gripping a ten-inch cooking knife. His movements were as mechanical and unrelenting as an automaton. He lurched past the Doric pillars flanking the hall, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the tile five feet in front of him.
Sans suppressed a shiver and stepped forward to block the kid’s path. He donned his eternal smile like a shield. “hey buddy. looks like you’ve been pretty busy.”
The kid jerked to a stop. The pinpricks of red in his eyes glowed like dying coals.
“you look a little frustrated.” Sans continued, pretending to study the kid’s face. “i’d say you have the expression of someone who’s died five times in a row.” He counted to five on his skeletal digits and rolled them into a fist. “one for each finger. huh, fancy that.”
“Shut up,” the kid snarled, raising one rigid arm to level the knife.
Sans gleaned a grim satisfaction. It was good to confirm that the watch didn’t need tuning. “you sure about this, champ? last time i checked i was five and oh. i’m not a gambler, but the odds seem to be against you.”
“I said shut up!” The kid screeched, lunging forward with bared, animal teeth.
*****
Sans the skeleton stood in a hall of gold, tilting a pocket watch in his hand; pondering its origins.
A few days ago, he had simply stumbled upon it while rummaging through a box of scrap metal in his lab’s basement. Considering where the box had come from, the watch could only have belonged to one person: Gaster.
At first, it had seemed as old and broken as all the other contraptions that Gaster had cobbled together over the years. Its casing was tarnished and coated in metal shavings. The odd, four-digit tally on its face read 0000, as if it had never been used. Sans had decided to toss it back and forget about it. It hadn’t been the first relic he’d dug up, and it wouldn’t be the last. He’d lifted it into the air with his magic, preparing to lob it like a basketball into another crate of scrap, but as his blue aura surrounded it, a hidden panel on its back had snapped open, revealing an electrical port compatible with his lab’s computer. It wasn’t until Sans had hooked it up that he realized what it was.
A stream of code more complex than he thought possible had crawled across the enormous monitor of his supercomputer. At the very bottom, after the end line, a message had scrolled up, in a font only Gaster ever used. In the end, the truth will be your only friend. It was a common phrase of his, the sort of thing he spouted whenever Sans stopped thinking analytically and grew too sentimental about an experiment.
But the message itself seemed out of place. Gaster had never been one for ceremony. He didn’t personalize his inventions; didn’t see the purpose in carving his initials or messages into their metal shells. Everything he did was for a purpose. Nothing superfluous. That message meant something. It wasn’t just a stray line of poetry.
Sans braced his arm against a pillar in the golden hall and mulled it over.
did you see this coming, old man? were you talking to me? yourself?
But he pushed the matter aside and checked the tally on the watch. 0023. For a second, his porcelain grin grew genuine.
i must be better at this fighting thing than i first gave myself credit. maybe I can actually… win.
But as soon as the idea came to him, he stamped it out. Now was not a time for hope or wishful thinking. Only determination remained: his versus the kid’s. No matter what came, he knew what he must do. He’d deliver the same judgment for as many times as the kid was willing to step up. To the end of time, if that was what it took…
As Sans steeled himself, the kid appeared, and stormed down the hall, eyes fixed on the shadows that Sans had concealed himself in.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the kid knew where he’d be hiding, but it still managed to unnerve him. With a hot sigh, Sans emerged and adopted a defensive posture. “let’s just get to the—”
The kid hefted a rock from behind his back, launching it at Sans’ skull. It whistled through the air with enough force that Sans wondered if the kid had dislocated his own shoulder. Sans dodge in the span of a blink, but the kid was already charging, using the feint of the first attack to ready his knife in a plunge toward Sans’ gut. But it, too, failed. Sans teleported back a few feet, and then a few more for good measure. A flutter of exhilaration made him talkative.
“well, that didn’t go according to plan. guess that means it never will, then?” He donned his most intimidating face. “say hi to sans number twenty-five for me.”
*****
Sans brooded in a hall of gold, staring at the stained-glass windows that loomed down from on high, like lantern-bearing sentinels on a battlement. The prophetic symbols that covered them came across to him as a cruel joke at that moment.
at least we figured out what kind of “freedom” the angel was selling.
He shuffled from one window to another, fiddling with the watch’s hidden panel. A stream of light caught its reflective, metal casing, and blinded him for an instant. He blinked several times, glimpsed the number, and then blinked several more. 0078. It became clear that his eyes weren’t lying to him.
“that’s just not playing fair,” Sans muttered. “how many do-overs does one brat deserve?”
Gaster’s lectures on determination filtered through his head. The gist had always been the same: with enough force of will, time itself would bend like a soft pretzel. And if the kid had anything, then it was force of will. This would go on for as long as the kid wanted it to. Into infinity…
The rhythmic clop of sneakers on tile drew Sans from his thoughts. The kid approached him with a casual step, taking slow, sweeping views of the hallway and seeming to drink in the sights with relish. He feigned surprise when Sans revealed himself. “Hello Sans. I’m glad to see you alive and well. It seems like just a few minutes ago I ran into you and…” The kid trailed off, adopting a sharp, toothy smile.
Sans’ bones grew cold. He tried to keep the quake out of his voice. “that expression you’re wearing… you’re really kind of a freak, huh?”
“Freak? What do you mean by that?” The kid slowly cocked his head to a grotesque angle. “If you were in my shoes, you’d take a few victory laps too, wouldn’t you? It’s only fair. It’s still seventy-five to three, anyway.”
Sans couldn’t find any words. The sudden chill had locked his jaw. He teleported back and summoned his defenses: wall after wall of jagged, snow-white bone.
The kid brandished the knife, pausing to admire its fiery glint in the light of the hallway. “Let’s try to even the score,” he said.
*****
Sans waited in a hall of gold, clenching the watch in his jacket pocket, and thinking about his impossible blunders; about the countless universes that swirled forever beyond his sight. They were the worlds where he had taken action. With Gaster. With Pap. With the kid. They weren’t like this world, the one he had allowed to rot out from underneath him. And all over what? Some trifling apathy? Some philosophical puzzle?
He drew the watch from his pocket and slanted it against the light’s glare. His mind caught in place, as if the gears of his thoughts had been jammed by a crowbar. He closed his eyes for ten long seconds then opened them again.
0287.