A/N: Version of events where Frisk has never succumbed to genocide, but still resets in the hopes of saving Asriel.

This chapter and the next can be read as one-shots.

TW: depression, suicide, self-harm, language.

Enjoy.

The ninety-fourth reset, you think. That's when he started to unravel—or at least, that was when you started noticing.

It was nothing alarming at first. His comic sans script just left him a little more slowly than usual, flicking characters one by one into your ears as if they couldn't be bothered to form words. His heavy, faded eyes pierced you as he spoke, well past you into a world beyond. Weariness, you understand now. Odd was all you thought then. Nothing should be so different. Going back in time meant starting over, right? Maybe you were the one who was tired, projecting your emotions onto this skeleton who could be feeling anything under his frozen mask of a grin. It wouldn't surprise you. How many times had you tried in vain to save that damn flower child, over and over and over?

Then, more and more frequently, you caught his empty stare into the cavern ceiling above, into the hollows of his palms below. You noticed his absence, mentally, physically. He was always there when you started, sure, there to greet you with soft phalanges outstretched. Upon progressing, however, his stations each began to yawn with a Sans-shaped hole, haunting in their four-foot-tall abyss.

A telescope unmanned. A shortcut untraveled. A hall without a judge.

When face to face with Asgore and Asriel to follow, he hadn't even answered Papyrus' call to save you. That tall, cheerful spindle of a skeleton hadn't seen him, he said, not since you'd passed his puzzles in Snowdin. It was as if Sans had vanished. Into dust, you shuddered to think.

At first, you didn't dare ask if something were wrong. He stubbornly kept to the same script, looked trepidly away from you if your face showed even an iota of concern. If something were wrong, he didn't want you to know it. It took a timeline of his complete absence after Snowdin to rile your courage.

You met him outside the Ruins as always. He hardly bothered to hide the whoopee cushion from you anymore. Or had he ever? You saw his eyes shift discreetly to the number on your arm, the counter for your reset you drew at every start. 99. If it meant something to him, he didn't let it show.

You played along with Papyrus' puzzles under Sans' watchful but ever distancing eye sockets. Before he had the chance to disappear, as he had the last time you crossed the bridge to Snowdin, you sought him out at the bottom of the hill. You found him leaning beside the wall of eyes, staring almost forlornly to the faraway, warmly lit cabin beyond the cliff's edge. At least … that was what you had assumed he was looking at. Now, you're not so sure.

Before he could say his usual, you had taken his hand in yours and, as softly as you could … you asked.

He didn't answer you. He didn't have to. You'd never forget the look on his face, as if you should already know, as if you were to blame. Hollow-eyed. Lightless. Dead.

You'd never seen his smile fall. Its sudden absence frightened you more than anything he had ever said or done before. You wished you could go back to thinking it was impossible for the short skeleton jokester to do anything butsmile, but the facade had been undone. The implications dragged your soul to the ground, as if he'd cast it in blue … and in a way, he had.

Just as suddenly as it disappeared, his grin flitted to life again, albeit a fraction of what it once was. Now, it was something faded, something weak. He rested a hand on your head, ran his fingers more gently through your hair than you'd ever thought possible. It was the touch of someone who knew you, someone who loved you, someone who had walked this entire path alongside you, silently, and remembered.

"doesn't matter," he said, so quietly it hurt. "don't worry 'bout me, kid."

He took a shortcut away before you had the chance to say a word, and you wouldn't see him again that entire timeline.

The reset following, you traveled your usual path through the ruins, heart hammering. You had so many burning questions about how much he remembered, about his feelings, why he'd never told you. Once again shrouded in the winter white forest of the Underground, you trudged through knee-high snow toward Papyrus' "fence." You paused at the edge, waited for that familiar voice, that rusty baritone asking you to turn around and greet him properly.

But nobody came.

You turned anyway. Sans was nowhere to be seen. The branch along the path far behind you remained unsnapped, and no footprints followed but your own. You waited for minutes on end before realizing he wasn't going to show, not this time.

You continued onward. Past the wide bars of the gate, you found Papyrus, standing akimbo between Sans' sentry post and the conveniently shaped lamp. He scratched his head thoughtfully, perplexedly. He knew something wasn't right. Laziness was typical behavior of Sans, were it any other day, but … why was today significant, again?

"Papyrus?" you called without really thinking.

He turned to you and blinked. "OH!' he said. "HELLO, THERE! MY APOLOGIES. THE GREAT PAPYRUS WAS LOST IN A GRUELING BATTLE OF THOUGHT!" His gaze swung like a pendulum between you and the out-of-place device. "HAS ANYONE EVER TOLD YOU YOU LOOK LIKE A LAMP?"

It occurred to you then, all at once, that Papyrus didn't recognize what you were. Without Sans here to enlighten him, he would have never guessed you were the human he so desperately sought to capture.

"Have you seen Sans?" you asked.

"YOU KNOW MY BROTHER?"

"We're … friends." You frowned to consider that statement.

"HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE HERE ON DUTY, BUT …" He trailed off with confusion as if his next thought didn't make sense. "LAZYBONES MUST STILL BE ASLEEP. HMM."

"Can … could we go check on him?" you asked cautiously. "I-I really need to talk to him."

"OF COURSE!" Papyrus nearly shrieked, pointing skyward as if it were his own idea. "MAYBE YOU CAN GET HIM OUT OF BED! IF YOU'RE WILLING TO PUT UP WITH HIS INCESSANT BOONDOGGLING LONG ENOUGH TO BE HIS FRIEND, YOU MUST BE QUITE SPECIAL INDEED!"

The statement hung heavy like a weight in your red soul.

"FOLLOW ME, LAMP CHILD!" Papyrus instructed and ran off before you could think about it much further.

You had to jog to keep up with Papyrus' naturally long-legged strides. In shorter time than you'd ever managed, you found yourself in Snowdin Town, heading directly to the skeleton brothers' house. For good measure, Papyrus stuck his head into Grillby's as he passed. An eyebrow from the bartender flame, but no brother.

"SANS, YOU NUMBSKULL!" Papyrus shouted once inside their home. "WAKE UP! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING!"

Silence. Uneasiness twisted, slippery like an octopus in your stomach. You exchanged glances, but the Great Papyrus didn't seem unnerved in the slightest. He thumped up the stairs huffily. You followed at his heels.

Hammering on Sans' door yielded no results. It had always been locked in the past, but this seemed to be a non-issue to Papyrus. He only sighed, warned you to shield your eyes as he exposed the depravity of Sans' room. Beholding such filth would rob you of an irreclaimable innocence, he said. You smiled at him encouragingly, as you always did, but your eyes remained unguarded. When he pried open the door and flipped on the lights, you wished—you wished so hard—you had actually listened.

It was the normal mess you'd seen countless times before: the wad of blankets, the treadmill, a pile of trash where the perpetual tornado usually spun. None of this was of consequence to you, not now. At that moment, everything was tunneling away from the bedside, from the soft blue jacket, the black basketball shorts. They lay strewn across the mattress, dangling at the edge. Empty. No, you wish they were empty. Then, it could just be his laundry. No. Sprinkled among the clothing were heavy patches of a sparkling, silvery powder.

Papyrus staggered back to the banister, face twisted in an expression you'd never wanted to see. His hand jumped to his mouth, yours to the reset button. You'd never punched it faster in your life.

Lying once again among yellow flowers, you gasped under watery eyes. What … the actual … fuck. You breathed once, twice, three times. Steady now, heart.

Was this a fluke? You certainly hoped so. You hoped to god it wouldn't happen again, but you knew firsthand the fruits of crippling depression. Here you lay at the tail end of your own attempted suicide, albeit more than a hundred cycles ago. Following all the warning signs, Sans could have only done this to himself, and if that were true … he would probably try again.

You ran through the ruins faster than you thought possible. At Home, you begged Toriel fervently to take you to the Underground. Of course, she refused, but then you told her about the friend who would die without you, a comedian on the other side who liked to practice knock-knock jokes on ruin doors. When you described Sans that way, the way you knew she would understand, she opened the door for you but remained behind herself.

Sans failed to make his appearance once more, but you hoped you had only arrived too early. This time was different from the others, so different. You'd never made it this far this fast. Through ice and bark and a few cheeky monsters, you met Papyrus just outside Snowdin. You grabbed his hand and rushed him back to his house with little explanation. Your urgency was enough for him, bless his heart.

But there was dust again. And again. And again. With each attempt, you became more efficient. You made it there faster every time, by milliseconds, seconds, minutes. Finally, you arrived just a fraction of an inch closer to success.

Or maybe he had hesitated.

You flung open his door, just in time to see his skeletal hands clenched around his own soul, ripping it in two like a paper valentine. Straight down the middle. He gasped once, then … nothing. There were no ribs to hold his breath, no mouth to pass it through. He shimmered away into a sickeningly beautiful pool of ash like mercury moonlight. Gone.

That time, and only that time, did you hear Papyrus scream.

You wondered if Sans knew you saw, and if so … would he let you get there in time? It didn't seem that way. Following this route, you were faster than ever before, and yet he was already that gut-wrenching pile of almost-glitter. You weren't sure you could race there any more quickly. After more than thirty tries, your determination was wearing thin. How could you help someone who wouldn't give you the chance?

You cried on your flowerbed, so long you knew you couldn't possibly make it in time. So you went through the motions, as usual, urgency lost, dragged along by Toriel's warm hand through puzzles and spiked mazes. When you found her again in the long hallway, hiding behind the pillar, you threw your arms around her and devolved into tears again.

She didn't understand. She thought you were scared, that the ruins were overwhelming, that you didn't want her to leave again. She promised that, although she had to leave you, she was only a phone call away.

Drying your eyes, you mechanically took the outdated cell phone outstretched to you. And then, at that moment, hope struck you with a lightning intensity so forceful you stood rooted to purple stone tiles. Was this it? Was this the lifeline you needed?

The moment Toriel disappeared to her errands, you forced your trembling thumbs to dial out a number you'd called so many times it felt natural, a number you shouldn't know but couldn't possibly forget. It rang only once.

"HELLO?"

"P-Papyrus?" you managed to choke out.

"NYES, THIS IS THE PHONE OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS! WHO MAY I ASK IS SPEAKING?"

"Uh." You froze. "You don't know me, but …"

"THAT'S ALL RIGHT! I CAN JUST GET TO KNOW YOU NOW! ALTHOUGH … THAT MAKES IT KIND OF WEIRD YOU HAVE MY PHONE NUMBER."

"I just dialed every number sequentially until I got yours," you sobbed and laughed together.

"THE MOST SENSIBLE WAY!"

"Papy, are you home right now?"

"I AM MAKING BREAKFASKETTI IN MY KITCHEN AS WE SPEAK!"

"I need you to go check on Sans."

"SANS?" He huffed. "I CAN TELL YOU MOST ASSUREDLY HE IS NAPPING IN HIS ROOM."

"Just check … please. I wanna talk to him."

"WELL … ALL RIGHT."

There was a long pause. You could imagine him heading up the stairs to his brother's room, skipping steps. Then, you heard a knock.

"SANS?"

You held your breath.

"SANS, THERE'S SOMEONE ON THE PHONE WHO …"

You heard clattering. A second later, you realized his phone had hit the floor. Your heart fell after it, so fast you almost fainted.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" you heard distantly through the receiver. "STOP THAT! STOP THAT RIGHT NOW! SANS!"

There was deathly, terrible silence. You almost thought the call had dropped. Then, muffled sobs shuddered through the speaker into your ear. You sank dizzily to your knees.

A few minutes later, Papyrus picked up the phone again. "I'm sorry, stranger," he said, once he realized you were still there. His words left him more quietly than you'd ever heard. "Sans is …"

The reset button was already hovering ahead of you.

"He's not …"

You punched it before he could finish, so hard a crack ran down the middle.

… What?

You gaped. You'd seen Asgore destroy your mercy button countless times before, but never had you thought this could apply to a reset. It shattered like a mirror but did not truly break. As the scene transitioned back in time, more slowly than you'd ever felt, your shock bled away into rage. This was the cause, wasn't it? This power over time, this tool with which you had driven your dearest friend to endless suicide. The cycle had to end. It couldn't go on like this.

Golden flowers gathered at your feet, solidifying from a past now present. The cracked reset button began fading away into the dark. No more. You took your trusty stick in both hands and steadied it firmly above your head. No more. You brought it down on one wide, powerful arc. No more.

Everything warped in on itself with a permanence you'd never noticed was missing. Existence shuddered, settled into place like a puzzle piece. You panted as if you'd run a mile. Your surroundings appeared the same as any other beginning, but something about the air felt crisper, truer.

The reset button was gone.

You couldn't linger. This time had to count.

In the next room, Flowey stared you down. He trembled from the tips of his petals to his roots. Wide eyes, bared fangs.

"What did you do?" he asked, voice hushed.

You rushed past him and ducked a barrage of "friendliness pellets" without looking back.

"WHAT DID YOU DO?!" he screamed after you.

The words echoed down the hall, where you nearly ran straight into Toriel. She stopped dead to see you, but you wasted no time begging for her cell phone, even before she could introduce herself. Thankfully, the boss monster handed it over to you, though expressly confused who you might call among a monster-only network.

You dialed Papyrus' number with speed demon thumbs. His response was similar to last time, but you wouldn't let him get that far. You shouted over his dialogue with an urgency that would make Undyne proud.

"Sans is in trouble!" you said. "He's going to hurt himself and you need to stop him!"

"WHAT?" the great skeleton barked, though you could sense the trepidation in his voice.

"STOP HIM! PAPYRUS, PLEASE! YOU HAVE TO HURRY!"

For a heart-stopping moment, you heard nothing. You hoped he thundered up the stairs, hoped he swung the door open without knocking. Then, the phone dropped again, clapped and clattered to the ground—the same as before.

Your grip on the phone trembled. No. No, no, no, no, no. There was no turning back now, and if Sans … if he …

You cradled your head in your hands. Stars, what had you done?

Your attention sparked back to life when shouting suddenly fuzzed through the receiver, followed by the sound of rustling. A struggle? You listened intently. Your fingers twined around the locks of hair on your head, clutching them as if they were the only thing keeping you sane. You prayed to a god you only remembered in hopeless times.

Then, at long last, you heard crying again, but this time it wasn't from Papyrus. Your heart skipped into your throat.

You could hear the phone shifting, someone lifting it off the floor. Sans' distant tears became clearer, but it wasn't his voice that spoke to you.

"I'VE STOPPED HIM," said Papyrus, solemnly. "HE WON'T BE HURTING HIMSELF ANYTIME SOON."

Your only acknowledgment came as a sob of relief. Toriel's hand found your shoulder uncertainly, and you buried your face into her tunic. A pocket of silence enveloped you, but neither you nor Papyrus ended the call.

"Whoever you are," said the latter finally, so gently it sent shivers down your spine, "thank you."

You nodded before you remembered it meant nothing on the phone. "I want to go see him," you whispered.

"Of course."

When you finally arrived at the brothers' house in Snowdin, you found the front door unlocked and the entrance to Sans' room ajar. Spaghetti was burning on the stove; you turned off the gas and slid the pot to another node. As you climbed the stairs, your fear escalated more and more with every step. What if something had happened in the long hour it took you to get here?

Standing framed in posts and lintel, you stopped. The waterfall found its way out your eyes.

On the bed, Sans rested still and staring at nothing, cheek pressed to the chest of Papyrus' battle body. Alive. His eyes were empty, dark sockets flushed blue from crying, though no tears fell now. His fingers curled around the tail end of Papyrus' scarf like a child. His smile was gone.

Papyrus held him there wordlessly, running a gloved hand back and forth across his back. His soothing touch never ceased for a second, even when he turned to acknowledge you with a feeble smile. He watched you drag your feet to the bedside.

"Sans," you breathed shakily.

Pupils slowly illuminated inside his eye sockets. They stared at you a long, long time, devoid of emotion. You reached out a shaking hand to his cheekbone. When you touched him, it was as if you'd only breathed and his fence of leaves fell down around him. He leaned into your palm, face torn by the most broken expression you'd ever seen.

You couldn't help yourself then. You launched yourself into his arms, tears flooding over into the warm blue of his jacket. You cried like the child you were, loudly, unrestrained. He held you, and Papyrus held you both.

"I'm sorry," you wept, over and over. "I'm so sorry."

Sans ran his fingers through your hair as he had that day and so many days before the last time you truly saw him alive. His head dropped to rest on yours.

"asked you not to worry 'bout me, kid," he whispered.

Maybe an hour later, Papyrus left you to go on patrol, under the condition you watch Sans like a Loox. He asked you to call if you needed anything—anything—but if he should encounter a human, there would be no guarantees, "so please be responsible."

"he doesn't know you're a human, huh," said Sans with the genuine shadow of a smile.

You shook your head and grinned.

As the two of you lay together on his bed, facing each other like sleepover friends exchanging secrets, you conducted a long overdue conversation.

Sans confessed he hadn't been completely aware of the resets to start. It was a nagging déjà vu at the back of his head, a sense, a number. Over time, however, the more they happened, the more he remembered. What had once been a hunch became a nightmarish reality, knowing he would never see more than a day on the surface before everything was pulled back to square one. It nibbled away at him until his sense of purpose dissolved to nothing. He admitted to killing himself once or twice farther into the timeline, in those runs you failed to see him after Snowdin or Waterfall. As messed up as it was, the act made him feel he had recovered some semblance of control.

"i tried to hold out," he said of those moments. He tapped your wrist, where you'd failed to write a number. "wanted to give you till 100, at least."

"Why didn't you tell me?" you asked.

He barely brushed the backs of his fingers against yours in want of your hand, but too afraid to ask. "i trust you," he said. "y'know? to do the right thing. didn't want to fuck up whatever you had in mind by acting off-script. it had to be for a good reason, right? everything you do is for a good reason."

Neither of you spoke for several excruciatingly long seconds.

"at my worst, i started to wonder, though," he said. "is this just some game to you? running through everything over and over just to relive the undergoldendays or something like that. but that's a pretty dumb thought … right?" His eyes hollowed out, as you knew them to do when especially serious. "why'd you do it, kid?"

You stared back thoughtfully. His phalanges still rested back to back with yours, and it wasn't good enough for you, or for him. You threaded your fingers around his. His eye-lights returned and focused on their knots and ties.

"Asriel," you muttered. "I came back for Asriel."

"the dreemurr kid?" After a moment of thought, Sans seemed to understand. He smiled, a weak little curve of a thing you hated for its lacking but loved for its sincerity. "not satisfied until everyone's saved, huh," he said miserably. His words shattered apart near the end, and he broke down into tears again.

You hadn't expected that. As your thumbs failed to end the stream of water from his eyes, however, you realized why, just moments before he spelled it out for you.

"even if you keep resetting until the timelines fold in on each other … frisk … i can't imagine a clean way to save his soul. and if you keep trying … god … i'm at my limit, kid. i-i'm at m-my … i can't do it. it's me or him, you know that? it's m-me or …"

He curled in on himself, broken.

Shame washed over you. Your ability to reset had twisted into something of a god complex, given you the illusion of immortality, of inconsequence. You could have tried to save Asriel forever until your determination ran dry and your guilt was assuaged. Over the course of these last few resets, however, you'd come to understand that this crusade hadn't come free. It was the salvation of one, hand in hand with the destruction of another. You had run Sans into the ground for the sake of lifting Flowey to the surface.

He didn't have to say it. He didn't have to convince you. You'd made your decision when you smashed that reset button into oblivion.

You wriggled closer, wrapped your arms around him tightly. His trembling shoulders heaved in your small grasp with every sob. You lay there a long time, thinking. Then, you tucked your head over his and pressed your lips to his temple.

"But I already chose."

"yeah …" he said, as if resigned to his fate. "yeah, i guess it only makes sense that …"

"I chose you."

He froze suddenly, stiff as a board in your embrace. He lifted eye lights like needle points to yours. "you … what?"

You smiled sadly, and by the look on his face, he knew it was more than a statement.

"frisk, what did you do?"

You told him. Everything. As he listened, a million expressions passed his face: happy, sad, confused, surprised…. It was the most unguarded you'd ever seen him, and it was refreshing. You wished it could always be like this.

"why?" he asked finally, though his voice left him considerably lighter. He scooted back just a little farther to look at you properly. "why all that … for me? i'm pretty small, all things considered. side character in your life's story and all that."

You shook your head disapprovingly. He frowned.

"kid. you tried so hard for asriel. i watched you. a hundred or so resets? remember? and still, you … you threw all that effort away? all your determination addin' up to nothin'?"

"I'm determined to save someone else, now."

He blinked, at a loss for words.

"And … there's still the future." You smiled ruefully. "Even if I only have one shot."

A few lingering tears trickled down his cheeks. He smiled, the largest most genuine thing you'd ever seen cross his face for you. He squeezed your hands, both of them, and buried his eyes behind their knuckles. You felt new tears, different tears.

"if you've got room in your dimensional box for a bag of bones and a few dumb jokes …" he said gently, "kid … i'll do everything i can to make sure this one timeline … is the best timeline of your life."

A/N: Thinking about either doing a Sans POV, or using all this self-indulgent maudlin as a starter to something else. Thinking that, after Frisk destroys the reset button for his sake, Sans helps the kid find a way to both save Flowey and free the Underground. Thoughts?