Well. Last chapter! I'm kinda drained right now...
I had a blast writing this. No idea when I'll continue the series but I DEFINITELY have ideas already. I still have to go back and edit the hell out of the earlier chapters, but other than that, this ride is over.
Thank you to every single person out there who sent reviews, faved this, made fanart, or just read it quietly and liked it. You people are awesome.

Brothers

Without red magic on his hands and in his eye, taking the shortcut feeds directly on Sans' magic. It's a short and sharp pain, he has hardly the time to flinch and then it's already over.

~blip

He is flailing his arms for a second, fighting for his balance. Not only is it very different taking a shortcut here ‒ more physical than it was in the void ‒ but the floor he lands on is also slanted and he tumbles backwards until his back hits the wall.

"Sans?"

It's Pollard who notices him first, but he sounds a lot more confused than Sans expected. The way he says his name is insecure and questioning, almost as if he's not entirely sure it's the correct name at all.

"What?" Grynn says, it's so weird to hear her whisper. She shakes her head and rubs her temples.

Freeda's hands are dangling lifelessly at her side as she looks between them all, puzzlement clearly radiating from her.

Sans' mind is reeling, little concerns prodding at the back of it ‒ what happened to the lab, everything's broken and slanted, what's going on? ‒ but he ignores them, his eyes darting around the destruction in search for ‒

"SA!"

Papyrus' voice is loud and shrill, he's bouncing in his constraints on the metal chair and beaming at Sans with an impossibly wide, open mouthed and mostly toothless smile. "Sa, san, SAN!"

His broken but beyond enthusiastic attempts to say his name are all the motivation Sans needs. The magic in his soul boils up almost without his doing, bones breaking forth from in between the floortiles. None of the three creators have time to react before he slams his fist against the door to his left, sharp bones following the movement and ripping into the wood.

Whatever magic kept his bullets from damaging the door from the inside is not effective out here. The metal reinforcements break away, wood splinters into a million pieces. Sans jerks his hand downwards and his bones tear the door in two.

For a second, the low hum of the Core and the little tings of splinters spraying everywhere are the only things he can hear; everything else has gone still, quiet. Even Papyrus has stopped moving and screaming, staring silently at The Room.

Then, a white, disembodied hand grips the marred doorframe, too large and thin, fingers too sharp as they dig into the metal. Another mirrors it on the opposite side, its mass trembling and shaking as it fights to hold its form. Parts of it drop to the floor, dust or liquid or something in between as the palm crumbles and disappears.

And then another hand claws its way out of The Room, and another, and then three more. Fingernails scratching along the floor, twitching in the air with signs too fast to read, dragging the twisting, dripping mass of black behind it.

The form straightens up carefully, its segments falling into place, code flashing up along its lines and vanishing again. A black, empty grin stretches along the white face with a noise like breaking bones, the hands drifting around the figure in a wide circle.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Sans can see Pollard swaying on his feet.

Seven hands twitch through the air in a rapid rhythm, sign after sign falling from their fingers and forming words that echo through Sans' mind.

HEY KIDS

YOU WANNA LET ME TURN MY MACHINE BACK ON?

While Pollard is frozen in place, staring at Gaster's new form with sweat collecting on his forehead, Grynn and Freeda hastily push themselves into action. It's minimal, but the way they move slightly into the path between Gaster and his mysterious machine in the back is completely unambiguous.

Grynn's smile is strained and her eyes widened, shoulders drawn up and fingers twitching by her side. Freeda stands completely relaxed, still holding onto a few test tubes.

NO?

The black, jittering mass of Gaster's body trembles in place. Little tendrils are ghosting along the rim as if trying to flee, but with every passing second he gets a little better at keeping his form stable. He pulls himself up carefully, his many hands stretching out around him.

ALRIGHT

THEN I GUESS YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME

The words are lightning bolts, tearing right through the stillness of the moment. Sans throws himself to the side, barely ducking in time as with a piercing shriek, the seams of reality break apart. Red code bursts into the air right next to his ear, a swirling wave of heat and pain.

Glass crashes to the floor, then Freeda bolts forward and throws out a ring of wildly spinning triangles, rushing towards Gaster with dizzying speed.

The floor explodes into the air, wide cracks forming under the sizzling code, red symbols flashing up and changing direction. A loud sizzling noise erupts from where they crash into the bullets and disintegrate them in a matter of seconds. Freeda jumps, twists out of the way just in time. A corner of her labcoat catches on the red and becomes dust.

The floor under Sans' feet is shaking, a deafening booming sound resonating through his whole body with each new wave of glitching code breaking forth from Gaster's fingers.

Papyrus, he has to get to Papyrus.

Freeda's triangles are trying to skirt around Gaster's enormous attack waves, twirling through the whole room and Sans barely sees them coming in time. They ricochet off the wall to his right, he ducks and rushes forward with his hands touching the floor.

While Pollard scrambles for cover, hiding behind a metal table bolted to the floor, Grynn starts in the direction opposite to Freeda. They're trying to corner Gaster and attack him from both sides.

Sans' mind grabs her soul.

~ting!

He brings his hand down and slams her to the ground. Bones break through the tiles beneath her, but she pushes herself off the floor and backwards, away from the sharpened tips. With a sweeping gesture she summons two graceful arcs of diamond bullets, twisting around each other in narrow patterns as they rush towards Sans.

Sans turns to the side, dodges the first line, catches himself before he stumbles into the second and twists back around.

"Stop, stop it," yells Pollard from behind his table, frantically waving his hands at Grynn. "He's got one HP for fuck's sake!"

"He's attacking us," Grynn screams back, her blue soul slowing her down and dragging her towards the floor. With bared, gritted teeth she repeats her attack, still trying to circle around him so she can flank Gaster.

The waves of red code are crackling to Sans' left, a mechanical screech bleeding from the void. Sans can see billows of black and strings of red twisting around parts of the lab, pulling it into a vortex of flickering glitches. Somewhere in the chaos, between the enormous red maelstroms of destruction, is Freeda; darting around in a brutal zig zag course and throwing out attack after attack, each faster and more complicated than the previous.

A row of diamonds zips towards Sans and he has to jump backwards, where the walls are shaking and the floor is breaking under the pressure of Gaster's hands pulling reality apart. He gets too close and feels red inside, panics and scrambles forward again.

Grynn's bullets rush at him from the front, red bleeds into him from behind, Gaster is on the left and a wall is to the right.

Sans grasps at the code in his own head, numbers rushing through his mind, he seizes the universe around his coordinates and pulls.

~blip!

Thunk!

Grynn yells in shock as he crashes into her, they fall. Sans is faster than her, he knows what just happened and she didn't. She still fights for her bearings, he rolls off of her to the side and with his magic still clutching her soul, he twists gravity and pushes her to fall towards the wall on the left.

The wall that is completely buried in red, hit by all the flickering waves that Freeda dodged.

Changing Grynn's direction mid-fall leaves a grinding noise in his mind, skews the magic in his soul and makes it burn, but then she is pushed away from the wall to the back of the lab. Where it's safe.

Why did he do that?

Doesn't matter.

He's on his feet and running again, not risking another shortcut just yet. It's too different here, he doesn't know how to do it right here.

Papyrus is struggling around in his seat and yelling "SAN!" again, too excited, too unaware of what is happening. Somewhere behind them, Gaster's attacks catapult a metal table through the air and Sans lunges forward as it thumps on the floor behind him, the thundering impact vibrating through his muscles.

"Stop, wait," Pollard yells, stretching out an arm as Sans runs past his hiding spot. His fingers close around his elbow for not even a second, then Sans is ripping his arm out of his grasp already.

It's not at all the same as attacking Grynn. Looking at Pollard makes his blood boil, makes magic shoot through his veins in painful bursts, it's hot and burning, it's anger anger ANGER!

The air behind him suddenly feels heavy. Something almost like hot breath drifts over him, moves the hair over his eye, but the right one is useless anyway. A calm, growling hum is in his ears.

Pollard's face spells pure terror. He stares up over Sans' shoulder, trembling, losing all color.

Sans doesn't think, he just feels. He thrusts his palm out towards the monster and his magic follows along with triumphant excitement.

There is a short, high-pitched whine and then Sans flinches violently when a thundering blare rips his eardrum to shreds. A white hot stream of pure, concentrated magic blasts over his shoulder, he can feel electricity crackling through the air, pulling at every single hair on his body. Pollard's scream is nothing compared to the brutal sound.

Cowering and with his arms hiding his face, Pollard manages to bring a shield up just in time. The attack cannons into it, cracks splintering over the shiny surface, but the shield holds ‒ the stream of magic that makes the air around it scintillate bounces off to the side.

The screeching of the code segments grows garbled and angry. Sans looks up to see Gaster's makeshift body being shot right through the chest by Sans' stray attack, leaving a giant hole in the black, dripping goop.

The signed yelling of seven hands at once drills into Sans' head.

WHAT THE FUCK

ARE YOU FOR REAL RIGHT NOW

FUCKING IDIOT

LOOK AT THIS SHIT

I JUST GOT THIS BODY I'M NOT IN THE MOOD TO GET A NEW ONE ALREADY

YOU HAD ONE JOB SANS

I CAN'T WORK LIKE THIS

Pollard is still a cowering wreck at Sans' feet, shaking and breathing harshly behind his damaged shield. Freeda is jumping at the opportunity, throwing out a rain of bullets at the distracted Gaster. Grynn is fighting her way back to the front of the lab through the raising waves of red code. Sans should not be laughing right now.

Sans is laughing.

He is doubling over and clutching his stomach, laughs until it hurts, points one shaky finger at Gaster with the hole in his chest. "I blasted Gaster!" he wheezes in between laughs, gasping for breath and shaking with adrenaline.

FUCK YOU SANS

"What," Sans giggles. "Aren't you having a blast?"

This is crazy, he's shaking all over and the continued desire to laugh is really not appropriate right now. When he sees Freeda taking advantage of an opening in the sweeping attacks all around her, he still catches her soul ‒ ~ting ‒ and slams her to the ground.

Most of the hands blip out of existence around him and return back to Gaster's side, but two of them take the time to flip Sans off before they go.

That really isn't helping!

Gaster's body is already knitting itself back together and Sans can't see his stats of course, but it doesn't feel like he did any damage at all. Or rather, it seems that Gaster's glitched out stats completely ignored any damage done to them. Are Freeda's attacks, as vicious as they are, even any real danger to him?

Pollard has finally found his ability to move and he begins crawling away from Sans, staring at him with a level of fear in his eyes that is both confusing and exhilarating.

Sans gets the laughter under control again, but the grin on his face still feels a little crazy, pulling his lips back from his teeth almost painfully. Before Pollard can slip away and join the fight against Gaster, Sans pulls up a cage of cyan bones around him. Since the man's bullets have no attack value, he can't use them to destroy Sans' bullets and is trapped in place now.

Papyrus is staring at the now empty air above Sans' shoulder, more mesmerized than anything else. Looking at him still tied to the chair has Sans' mind harshly snapping back into place and he rushes towards him again. The machines surrounding the chair are beeping frantically, bustling with static any time a wave of Gaster's code rolls by close to them.

And that's too close to Papyrus for Sans' comfort, that's not a misfire that'd be half as funny as the Gaster Blaster was. Gaster is concentrating on Freeda, who is continuously evading his attacks that are reshaping the entire laboratory into a debris field of broken furniture, that are ripping the floor and ceiling apart to reveal the glinting tubes and cables of the Core ‒ and somehow, the only "injury" Freeda has suffered so far is a now slightly asymmetrical labcoat.

Grynn's attacks rush forward from the back, zeroing in on Sans again when he finally reaches Papyrus. But she's very far away and the density of her attacks suffers greatly over the distance. Sans doesn't have to evade streams and curls of diamonds anymore, but only singular bullets.

They go directly for his hands, trying to keep him from loosening Papyrus' restraints. Sans summons a thick bone into his left hand to block the bullets with. He doesn't have enough space for much else, Papyrus is right there in the middle of it after all, but with only one singular bone he can't do enough damage to dust the bullets.

They keep circling around him like aggressive flies, targeting his hands. The continued strain of having to maintain Pollard's cage doesn't help with his ability to concentrate enough to find an opening.

He rolls backwards away from the chair, clenching his teeth. The bullets follow him relentlessly, but at least they're a little further away from Papyrus now.

Grimly relieved, Sans drops the bone in his hand; that is not a way of fighting that he's good at. With a quick gesture he has a ring of bones floating through the air around him, zipping up and down to interrupt the path of Grynn's bullets coming at him. One after another the little diamonds scatter into dust.

As soon as hardly a handful of them are left, Sans dashes to the side, ducks under them and runs in a fast circle around Papyrus chair. Grynn sees him closing in and rushes back with an inaudible curse on her lips, but Sans grinds to a halt and slams both his hands on the floor.

A wave of bones crashes through the tiles, follows after Grynn with a roar. The few pieces of furniture that are still intact get shredded within seconds, glass shatters and smoldering lakes of chemicals splash onto the floor.

The bones reach so high that Sans can't see Grynn behind them anymore and he doesn't take the time to find out what happens to her. Coughing through the biting smell of volatile chemicals in the air, he takes a sharp turn back around, his bullets ripping Papyrus' restraints to shreds the second he lays his eyes on them.

Papyrus' arms are immediately stretching in his direction, his eyes are shining with happiness and he's moving towards Sans without paying any mind to where the chair ends.

~blip!

Sans catches him under the arms just before he falls. "San San San!" Papyrus babbles with the biggest smile, his feet kicking the air and his fingers grabbling at Sans' face.

When Sans pulls him in to get a better grip, Papyrus' arms swiftly wrap around his neck, his legs closing around his torso and then he's clinging to him like a monkey, practically vibrating with happy excitement. Sans tugs the toddler's head under his chin and, for just one tiny second, clings back.

And then a part of the wall explodes next to him.

Debris rains down on them and he jumps out of the way with a yelp. Papyrus mimics the sound, still having way too much fun with all this.

Red light flashes inside the giant dustcloud now obscuring Sans' view. Freeda runs out of it a second later, skittering backwards along the floor and leaving tracks of smoke, a close-knit ring of bullets spinning in front of her, trying to keep the slashing tendrils of Gaster's red code at a distance. But no matter how many attacks she throws at it, all that gets dusted are her own bullets without leaving even a tiny dent in the red waves.

Sans scrambles out of the way, but Papyrus' extra weight is more difficult to balance than he expected. When Grynn's bullets return to cut off his escape path, the only way to dodge is for him to drop to the floor on his back and push himself backwards off the metal chair with his feet.

Sliding along the synthetic floor leaves burning marks on his elbows and pushing himself back to his feet with Papyrus in his arms takes far too long; Gaster's code towers over him, an enormous wave ominously tipping forward.

He tightens his grip so much that Papyrus mewls in discomfort. The very moment the wave breaks above Sans' head, he's back on his feet, dashing forward into the renewed stream of diamond attacks curling in front of him.

His legs scream with the effort of dodging around them in tight, fast circles, the breath is momentarily punched out of him when he loses track of his surroundings and crashes into the wall to his right. But behind him is the feeling of angry red, the hot streams of unreality picking the lab apart to the sound of garbled static and he immediately pushes himself off the wall again.

Glass shards dig into his naked feet as he keeps running uphill, the ground swaying under him or maybe that's just his bad eye and ear screwing with his sense of balance. Papyrus is crying now, he can see the red wave closing in on them over his shoulder. Shattering, clanking, booming sounds are coming closer, Sans runs up the steep slope until every breath bites harshly at his lungs. More than once he almost slips on the blood coating his feet.

His soul is stuttering in his chest, worn out from the amount of magic he's already used. He shortcuts forward a few steps and it hurts, but there is death behind him and a life in his arms.

Finally, with wheezing breaths and trembling legs, he careens into the doorframe to the kitchen on his right, hitting his shoulder hard against the bent wood. He slips at last, falls straight forward into the room and has just enough time to bring his hands up under Papyrus' head, then they both hit the floor with a painful thud.

The surge of red roars past the door, parts of the frame sizzling quietly as they're taken apart and deleted. But the rest stays outside, hunting for Freeda and probably not even aware that Sans and Papyrus almost got caught in the crossfire.

Sans is gasping and shaking while the pain in his feet and shoulder catch up to him. His nose is bleeding from when he hit the floor with it, his chest is constricting painfully as he struggles to catch his breath. Magic pulses in his soul like adrenaline, an urge to fight, to get up, to use it. It's replenishing quickly now, he's pretty sure he let go of the cyan cage around Pollard at some point during all this and it's an immediate relief for his magic.

For just a second, he worries if the man made it out alright, if Freeda did. Grynn was probably too far away to get caught up in that attack.

Papyrus, his back on the floor, his arms and legs still wound tightly around Sans, lightly pats the back of Sans' head with his pudgy hands. "San? Ok? San ok?"

Loud smashing and shrill shrieking is still sounding from the lab, the fight isn't over. But they're safe here for now, that fight isn't about either of them really. He curls around Papyrus and lets himself fall to the side, taking his weight off of him.

"Yeah," he mumbles. "Sans is ok."

Still, they can't wait around here forever. Sans isn't sure why Gaster is willing to destroy the entire lab just to get to his weird machine, but something tells him he shouldn't stick around to find out. He's got Papyrus now, leaving the Core and running as far as he can is the only next step he should worry about. Other-Sans said so.

When the shaking of the ground increases again and dust starts trickling from the ceiling, Sans shakes his head with a loud huff, before pushing himself back on his stinging feet. With his magic he takes hold of the splinters still stuck between his toes and quickly pulls them out, almost without flinching.

Sans fishes a handful of cleaning rags from the rubble, wraps some of the stiff, synthetic cloth around his feet and uses the rest to hastily tie together a sort of backpack that he can use to carry Papyrus.

Papyrus blows happy spit bubbles into his neck, apparently comfortable with his new position. Sans blindly reaches for him and pats his head, then, very carefully, he sneaks back to the door and sticks his head outside.

A pointed formation of tiny triangles zips right past him and quickly jerks back a bit. So Freeda made it out. He tries following her bullets with his eyes, but they're so fast he loses them not even two seconds later.

Gaster's giant wave attack has reduced half of the lab to rubble and ashes. From the door to The Room all the way up to just beyond the entrance to the kitchen, nothing is as it was. The sheathing along the walls is peeled back to reveal damaged tubes, blue sparks flying forth as the only remaining lightsource in that area.

The whole ceiling is sizzling red, the bending and bubbling material slowly losing its form. The floor is a crater of sharp edged pieces of tiles sticking up into the air. Holes are dug deeply into the ground, in some places they reach so deep that the actually important parts of the Core have been laid bare far beneath them. Whatever small parts of the floor are still flat enough to walk on are swaying in place alarmingly, about to tip over and fall into the abyss below.

Sans can't see any of the burning, bubbling sea of lava, but the fact that it's suddenly stiflingly hot in here tells him without a doubt that there is far too small a barrier between them and its surface now.

Along the edge of the destruction, Gaster and Freeda are still hunting each other, Gaster's attacks now smaller but faster and Freeda's more concentrated on pushing him into a corner instead of flat out damaging him.

Behind them, past their brutal bullets and attacks, past a chasm of wild currents, deadly drops and sharp spikes, is the exit door.

With angry tears stinging in his eyes, Sans hits against the doorframe with his fist, biting his lip to keep the curses inside. They can't make it past all that without help, not with Gaster and Freeda continuing their insane battle without paying any mind to collateral damage. He would still risk it, but not with Papyrus on his back, throwing off his balance and making the consequences of failure so much more catastrophic.

Sucking in a sharp breath, he runs back out of the kitchen, bent forward to make himself smaller, less of a target. Where are Grynn and Pollard?

Just as the thought enters his mind, he reaches a point far enough to the raised side of the lab for him to see past the piles of broken furniture in the middle. The partition screen, its metal framing bolted to the floor, is seemingly melting on top and has holes ripped into it, but it's one of the very few things still standing. There is movement behind it ‒ just a short flash, but enough for him to realize that somebody has apparently had the same idea as him.

Get to the machine while Gaster is distracted.

Only that Grynn and Pollard will likely try to destroy it, meaning Gaster would lose, meaning he would be angry.

Meaning none of them would get out of here alive.

Papyrus' fingers dig into his shirt when he lunges forward again, running at full speed. His collar gets pulled back and cuts into his neck, but it's better than not having his arms free. With his magic mostly recovered, he risks a few blips along the universe again, only pulling himself forward a short distance at a time. It's easier to control this way.

He needs that battle to end, he needs Gaster to calm the fuck down and help him get out of here. And that will only happen once he's reached his goal, once the machine is activated.

Just as he steps through another tiny rip in space and time, before his wounded feet even touch the floor again, he throws his hand out to the side and an avalanche of bones rushes in from the left, hacking what's left of the partition screen to pieces. The metal frame clanks to the floor.

Grynn and Pollard spin around, eyes wide and posture defensive. When Grynn realizes it's Sans and not Gaster, she almost seems to relax for a second, right before ‒

~ting, ting!

Both their souls turn blue and drag them backwards to the floor. Grynn already understands the pattern of this attack and she's pushing herself off the floor, the altered gravity actually enabling her to jump higher than she normally could; but Pollard is slower and he screams in pain when bones break through the floor below him, piercing his soul in rapid succession and sucking the HP out of it one tiny drop at a time.

Diamonds fly at Sans again, but their patterns are more wobbly than before, less controlled, and he remembers that other monsters don't replenish magic as quickly as he does. His bones vanish, Grynn's irregular attacks actually harder to predict and dodge than her usual, carefully crafted patterns. Papyrus' is bounced around on his back as Sans twists away from the bullets with choppy movements. The lack of happy squealing clearly shows that he's actually aware of the dangerous tension by now.

"Stop, STOP! Stop it," yells Pollard, scrambling out of the way of Sans' next wave of bones, practically on all fours as he fights to regain balance. "Can we PLEASE stop this nonsense, just, let's just TALK!" There is no room to navigate in this tiny corner of the lab and his back hits wall. He stretches both arms out toward Grynn and Sans respectively, who each have bullets floating around them and baring their teeth at each other, fingers twitching and magic bubbling in anticipation.

Sans doesn't take his eyes off of Grynn and she isn't backing down from their staring contest either ‒ but she also isn't attacking him for the moment.

"You. Seriously. Want to talk right now," she growls at Pollard.

Encouraged by the fact that she even acknowledged his request, Pollard shakily pushes himself off the wall, hands still raised between them in placation. "Wait, just wait for one second, okay?" When he's this scared, his voice is almost as squeaky and nasally again as it was before; before he got sick, before he came to Core. Before Sans became really scared of him.

It's almost nostalgic.

Pollard turns to him a little, very slowly, his ears twitching nervously where they're pressed flat against his bald head. "Okay, just ‒ what do you want?" he asks, one of his hands helplessly signing along with clumsy, flawed movements. "C-come on. Gaster doesn't care what happens to you, why would you help him?"

He isn't, but the implication of Pollard's words makes Sans too angry to point that out. His shoulders rise up and through clenched teeth he spits, "Why would I help you!"

Whether it's his tone or the fact that he's talking again at all, Pollard instinctively jerks back and brings up his shield right in front of him ‒ just in time for a thousand thin, sharpened bones to pelt against it, forcefully enough to actually push it back and crack it in multiple places.

Sans shouldn't be as angry as he is, he thinks when he lunges forward, his arms thrusting out and shattering the shield in two with the next attack. But the voices were, they hated Pollard so much and Sans may not hear them anymore, but he still feels their rage.

Pollard stumbles, desperately avoiding as many bones as he can, but Sans has his soul wrapped up in magic. SLAM, he hits the wall, CRASH, into the ceiling, THUNK, back on the floor. Dust sprays up on each impact.

A shield flickers up and is immediately ripped to pieces. Diamonds fly at him from the side and Sans dodges without even thinking. Teeth clatter to the floor with the next impact, horrified noises falling along beside them that are hardly a voice anymore. Sans thinks of a different voice, a small, scared, high-pitched whisper from the void that made Pollard twitch ‒ and his eye burns hot with magic and rage.

He shouldn't have stopped paying attention to Grynn.

Because hiss, go the vents.

Sans drops to the floor, Pollard follows him. Dust clouds tremble in the air above his head, following the rhythm of the shaking lab.

This isn't real, this isn't real, Sans knows it isn't real. He doubts the vents are even working anymore.

But the void is in his mind.

His body is somewhere else, useless, motionless. Little hands patting his head that he can barely feel. The small, small voice saying his name as best it can, so worried, so far away. His right hand trembles with distant fury.

His head lies on its side, watching with glassy eyes how Pollard fights to get back up. Bent forward, shoulders tense, he kneels on the floor, hands pressed to his face. Thin trickles of dust flow down his arms from in between his fingers, his body gently sways from one side to the other. He makes sure not to touch his nose, it's crooked and looks weirdly pulpy.

Grynn's feet entering Sans' field of view are a blur. He can't see clearly among the gray, can't hear properly past the thick wall around his mind, can't really feel how his eyes grow hotter, how little pools of warm water collect in his eyes.

He's pushed to the side, switched off, discarded. Grynn helps Pollard back on his feet and Sans can't do anything to push them down again, to stop them, to make them pay.

Flickers of red light pierce through the gray, swift, tiny spots. Little sparks of feeling as a sheet is pulled to the side and there is glinting metal, heavy tubes, delicate glass. He sees the machine and barely cares anymore.

Except there's still a voice, a small voice, and it grows larger. Is this the void calling again? It doesn't feel like it. It has never said his name like this. Never sounded so scared.

Feet shuffle on the floor, coming closer, coming back, he can't tilt his head up to see but there's a shadow looming over him now. Bending down. Something reaches for him.

And a small, round, soft hand reaches back, palm outward and fingers splayed. And "No!" says the tiny voice, bubbly and angry. "Bad! No!"

And something long and cyan pops up in front. Thin, wobbly, blurry, but its magic burns through the void in Sans' eyes, the color clear and definite.

Cyan.

A cyan attack from Papyrus.

An attack he shouldn't have.

Unless they went through with the experiment while Sans was stuck in The Room.

Unless they stuck a needle in his baby brother's eye and forced an attack on him that was Sans' responsibility, his burden, his bones ripping apart a human child's skull.

Sans' right hand jerks up and smashes flat onto the ground next to his face, the wetness in his eyes burns with scalding energy again.

The void shatters.

There's only red, and a scream, and a pain in his throat as he crashes forward right into Grynn. His elbow in her stomach, his teeth in her arm that was reaching for him, her angry yell as she tries to pull him off. The taste of skin and dust on his tongue as he bites down and pulls back, and finally her scream is not just anger and frustration, but all pain.

He spits and wet, white dust runs down his chin. She clutches her arm to her chest, staring and screaming at the part that's missing.

Pollard yells something and Sans doesn't listen, there is a high-pitched whine in his ears. Then it's behind him, a growl and a whine and then a BLAST of magic, white, hot and blaring and this time, Sans doesn't let go of the feeling. There is utter panic in front of him as Grynn and Pollard practically trip over each other in their attempt to avoid the burning stream of pain that's almost filling up the entire corner.

The rapid sound of two sets of HP ticking down is a sound of triumph now. He ignores the pressure on his magic, the heavy weight in his chest, and with a strained yell he jumps backwards, thrusts his hand out and pushes the thing further into the corner.

He can barely make it out over the white blur of the enormous ray of magic. All he sees is that it's white like bone, it has spikes and teeth ‒ and it's at least three times as big as he is.

Papyrus has his hands dug deep into Sans' shoulders, holding onto him with hitching breath. The roar of the attack is deafening, a continuous shockwave pushes against Sans and he has to fight hard for his balance, leaning forward against the burning wind tearing at him. It feels as if his feet might slip off the floor any second, he's afraid to lift them for even a moment to adjust his stance.

A cracking and crumbling sound comes from the other end of the corner, barely audible, but as soon as Sans hears it and sees cracks forming on the wall under the pressure of the magic blast, he yells wordlessly with the effort of pulling his magic back again.

It's like fighting another will inside his mind, something there that wants to keep fighting, keep destroying. But Sans grits his teeth, pulls his hands back and yanks on the leash with all his might, an angry growl on his lips.

An answering growl thunders from the massive jaws. A glowing white pupil much like his own rolls back in its black, empty socket and glares at him.

Sans clenches his fist and swiftly moves it to the side. His magic follows straight behind and with a little whooshing sound, the monstrous, floating skull fizzles back out of existence.

Papyrus is pressing himself firmly against his back and Sans clearly feels how his whole body trembles. Apparently neither Grynn nor Pollard can keep themselves from doing the same, pushed back against the wall, slumped on the floor and pressing their hands over their own souls with heavy breaths. They stare at the spot where the skull just vanished, eyes impossibly wide and beads of cold sweat running down their foreheads.

That ‒ attack, if he can even call it that, might be a bit scary, Sans realizes.

He doesn't find it so bad, to be honest, but when he reaches around to gently stroke Papyrus' shoulder, his hands instantly clamp down around his own and he holds on with a small whimper.

It takes all of Sans' willpower to not drop everything else so he can hug and reassure him right then and there. But he made the mistake of taking his eyes off the opponent once, he won't do it again.

Grynn and Pollard are not even entirely back on their feet yet, just struggling along with their hands propped against the cracked wall for support, when he wraps his magic around their weakly pounding souls again. They yelp and scramble away, even Grynn with a definite grimace of fear on her face. Sans yanks them away from the wall, makes them fall past himself back into the lab, where everything is still shaking and code flashes like lighting through the air.

The very second the two scientists tumble to the floor, he throws a small row of bones chasing after them. It's not even a serious attack or one that's hard to dodge at all, but with their HP so low already, they dash away from it with a haste that borders on panic.

Right where the partition screen used to be, Sans erects a wall of cyan bones, cutting himself off from the rest of the lab. For now, at least. He can't hold that attack forever, after all.

Before Sans, squished into the corner and with a white sheet still partially hanging off of it, stands Gaster's machine.

It looks ‒ different. Not like the kind of machines he usually sees all around the lab. There are no monitors, no buttons or even power cords as far as he can see. No writing anywhere, no labels telling him what part does what. Nothing that tells him how to turn the damn thing on.

But Pollard managed to turn it off without instruction. Surely that means Sans can figure out to switch it back on. He coos a few calming sounds in Papyrus' direction and Papyrus answers by bubbling relieved sounds into his neck, then Sans steps forward until his nose almost touches the machine.

It's a collection of dull, black panels fit together into a sort of arc, stabilizing the intricate network of thin glass tubes in its middle. Some thicker black tubes connect the panels with the glass ‒ these are the same ones that are often used in the experiments on Sans, the kind that he not so long ago had an entire cluster of shoved into his soul.

The red feeling is here. Very soft, very small, but it's here. This is not the same as the angry, hot red burn of Gaster's waves of code, the ones that he pulls forth from somewhere between worlds and forms in ways that can only destroy. What is quietly ghosting over Sans' skin now is that same red feeling that made him hear the whispers, that made him strong enough to find a way out of the room ‒ that first made him feel for the very fabric of the world and pull it along underneath him, just gently nudging it in place.

In the middle of the machine, at the point all the tubes lead to and where they join up into one single cluster, there is a narrow container covered by black casing. At the edge, where small clasps are holding the casing in place, a tiny ray of red light breaks through the black, barely even visible unless he leans forward and squints.

Sans thinks he's seen the material of the casing before, on protective suits mostly or on other machines where specific parts have to be extra isolated from even trace amounts of ME in the air. So, apparently magic can't move through this stuff and seeing as the machine has no electricity running through it, it needs magic to function. Red magic.

It's not the time for hesitation, for overthinking things. Sans very carefully reaches into the machine, past the web of glass and metal tubes, and flicks the clasps on the casing to the side. It immediately slides open and reveals the thin glass cylinder underneath.

A red soul is floating inside. Slowly, calmly pulsing in place, its red light begins flowing through the tubes, filling the whole machine with a soft red.

Sans' fingertips are pressed against the container, right above the soul, and just like when he was first feeling the pulses of Papyrus' soul from inside the tank, there is a warmth. Something ‒ living.

He almost thinks he hears a voice.

His index finger gently taps against the glass.

"Knock knock?" he whispers.

Behind him in the lab, something explodes.

Sans almost stays here with the soul, but Papyrus is still clawing at his shirt, craning his neck so he can see above his shoulder and the red stuff is not good for him, they need to get out. His fingers slip off the warm glass and he turns, cyan bones dropping back into the floor so he can run outside.

He is greeted by pieces of furniture being flung through the air past him and within a second, his mind snaps back into fight mode. Ducking and reaching back to tug Papyrus' head down, he dashes forward and around the shattered tables, chairs and machine parts raining down on him from where Gaster is taking apart what little remains of the laboratory.

There is Freeda, pushing aside the debris that is aimed at her by having it clash against a row of her bullets in mid-air, dancing around the feelers of red code still grasping at her from all directions.

Sans can't stop to get a good enough look at her, but she seems slower than before. Gaster has collected some tiny holes in his mess of a body, a few small triangles even still stuck in his black flesh, but it doesn't actually appear to bother him all that much. His flat white face with the static black grin is hard to read, but his movements spell annoyance rather than anything resembling exhaustion.

Sans crosses the lab, quickly ducks into the kitchen and hardly spares more than a glance at Grynn and Pollard, who are holed up in a corner and trying hard to regain some HP ‒ but, unsurprisingly, healing isn't really their strong suit and the food has long been scattered around the lab and burned to ash. They flinch back when he enters, but Sans just takes one second to catch his breath, then he darts back outside.

Gaster's and Freeda's confrontation has destroyed such a large part of the laboratory that they keep moving up the slope towards the kitchen and the corner with the machine to avoid the crater behind them. Sans barely has to move down before he's within reach, then ‒

~ting!

‒ he throws Freeda to the ground.

She's the one who trained him at the start, and he knows she should be fast enough, but when his wall of bones breaks out from the ground beneath her, she doesn't have it in her to dodge them all anymore. Her health ticks down so rapidly, she is left with barely half of her points when she manages to roll to the side and jump back on her feet.

Where red code wraps around her leg.

Sans jumps back in shock when she screams, just for a second, her right leg enveloped in red from the knee down. Then he sees her square her shoulders, stamp down hard with her other foot and lean back.

She pulls backwards, a swarm of bullets assaulting the tendril wrapped around her leg. Sans can't make himself look away when she breaks free with a breathless gasp ‒ and her leg is ripped clean off.

She drops back down, a strangled noise falling from her lips and a pool of dust quickly collecting underneath her. With shaking hands she clutches around the stump, but lets go immediately when Gaster's attacks rush at her anew. She throws out a broad ring of bullets in front of her, but they are shaking and losing their formation quickly. All she can do is pull herself backwards with the other arm, one palm raised in front of her to try and direct her bullets. She knows she lost, but her teeth are clenched in hard defiance.

Right before Gaster's code crashes down and swallows her whole, Sans pulls his hand back and Freeda's blue soul drags her backwards across the floor, a thick trail of dust flying after her. She is flung into the wall, hit by a thousand sharp bones, so tiny that each is hardly more than a needle prick.

Sweat runs down Sans' forehead, lowering his attack damage a challenge that he never had to attempt before. Just as he can feel her HP wear down and sees her shoulders slump, he clenches his fist and stops all his attacks.

She slides down the wall slowly, unconscious before she even hits the ground.

Hands with holes in them lazily circle around Sans, while the red billows of code slowly die down around them.

0.3 HP

NOT BAD, CONTROL-WISE

NOT NECESSARY EITHER

There is no real curiosity behind the signs, the words, the voice in Sans' head. So he just stands there for a moment, breathing, glancing around at the destruction and feeling a bit of the tension bleed out of his shoulders.

It seems like Gaster can't actually form something as detailed as legs or arms out of his black goo. The way he walks becomes an odd struggle of writhing, dripping tendrils trying as best they can to pretend at being legs for long enough to pull him forward, and every few seconds something glitches, something gets lost in scratching static and he jumps forward a few paces. Almost like Sans' shortcuts, but it doesn't seem like it's something he does on purpose.

Black eyes in a cracked skull are trained on the corner opposite the kitchen.

MACHINE IS ACTIVATED?

Again, not a question, because he doesn't even stop "walking" towards said machine to wait for an answer.

It's only now that something clicks in Sans' mind. The reason that Gaster even needed his help, the reason that Freeda kept throwing bullets at Gaster even though she immediately saw how ineffective they were. Both of them had just been stalling, keeping the strongest of their opponents busy so that their allies could get to the machine and either destroy or activate it. Gaster couldn't have gotten whatever he had planned done in piece with Freeda still there to get in his way, and Freeda couldn't have gotten to the machine and destroy it herself with Gaster getting in her way.

They were probably both a little frustrated with how long it took their respective allies to catch on. That one, brutal wave coming after Sans, herding him further up the lab where he had a good vantage point on the machine suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Papyrus is shifting on his back, much less tense now and looking after Gaster curiously. He babbles questioning syllables at Sans while pulling on his hair.

The path is ‒ not clear, exactly, but at least there's no fighting anymore. Sans stares over the chasm of destruction between himself and the exit. It still wouldn't be easy to navigate with Papyrus' weight on his back, but with a few shortcuts and maybe by turning himself blue and floating across the worst parts, they can definitely make it.

He plans a path in his head, guessing at the stability of the few areas that still look as if he could stand on the floor without making it crumble beneath him. Beneath the busted metal plates, thick isolated tubes, cables and the ruined panels of the Core, he can hear lava bubbling and the sweat running down his forehead is not a sign of exhaustion from the fight anymore.

Though that is definitely catching up to him as well; the longer he stands here the more he feels the cuts on his feet sting again, feels every single little hurt flare back up now that his brain isn't preoccupied with just staying alive anymore. His nose stopped bleeding but it still hurts, there is a dull, pulsing pain in his shoulder that's slowly stretching out over his entire back. His magic is the only thing that doesn't seem completely worn out, which is weird considering the fact that he used an entirely new attack without really knowing how it works yet.

Papyrus pats his head and tangles his fingers in his hair again. At least this time he doesn't pull. "San ok!" he says, more of a statement than a question, and Sans bends his head back as far as he can to smile at him.

They should leave now.

Sans stands still, his smile dropping slowly. He looks past Papyrus at the red corner that's growing more red now.

Red magic from a red soul.

The odd feeling of seeing a friend again after a long time.

This isn't right.

His feet carry him back across the lab nearly without his doing. They have time now, the danger is over. They'll still be able to leave. But there must be a reason why Grynn, Pollard and Freeda are so against the machine being activated. A reason why Gaster is so set on it. How can Sans be sure that he did the right thing, helped the right person, when he doesn't even understand what it all means?

Papyrus' babbling grows quiet when they enter the corner. Gaster is facing the machine, intense red light blurring the contours of his body ‒ or is that just him not caring to uphold his form anymore?

His many hands are delicately moving parts of the machine around, connecting glass tubes and little vials with each other, leading the flow of red on a specific path. He doesn't turn when Sans enters.

The red here feels sad and angry.

RED MAGIC

Two hands start signing, without any prompt from Sans' side, without any need to actually say what he wants because ‒ he suspects ‒ Gaster already knew. Already expected him to come back here.

IT BRIDGES TIMELINES

PULLS THEM CLOSER

SO THINGS CAN JUMP BETWEEN THEM

"Why do you need to jump timelines?" Sans asks.

And silently he wonders, if sticking both his hands deep into a giant puddle of red only made him jump into the void, not another timeline ‒ then how much of the stuff did Gaster have to take to actually cross the void?

Because he did. Sans is pretty sure about that by now.

THAT WAS MORE OF A SIDE EFFECT REALLY

Three hands at once tap an index finger against the container in the middle of the machine, where the soul is floating lifelessly.

HUMAN SOULS

ARE LESS PREDICTABLE

Sans' eyes get stuck on the soul. They won't move, won't even blink, no matter how much they start burning after a short while.

It floats there just like Penny's did, after he tore it out of her body. Just like she did in his mind, a memory, an echo, just like the feeling in his right hand, his right eye, his right leg. A last, dead remnant of a once living thing, hanging on just because.

And he knew this one.

Blurry tears are in his eyes as they snap back to Gaster, he refuses to let them fall. "You stole it," he says, surprised himself by how calm he sounds. Gaster doesn't even act as if he heard it, doesn't even deem it necessary to provide an answer. So it's true.

Of course it's true. Asgore would never just give this one to Gaster. Not for anything.

Now he understands the soul's anger, leaking constantly into the world around it and into the people near it, battling for dominance with the sadness following right behind. And now that he understands, it gets even more potent, it becomes a prickling feeling on his skin and a physical pain in his stomach. He stares at Gaster's back, at the way his many fingers precisely and coldly push his friend's energy to where he needs it to be. Sans' fists are shaking, he takes a step forward.

And an explosion shakes the whole lab.

Sans has no time to cover his ears, to turn away, to see anything coming. Just a few steps next to them the wall blows up into pieces, fire lashes out and Sans is flying.

With a panicked bout of survival instinct, he wraps his own soul in blue magic within seconds and shifts gravity to pull him backwards, away, away from the fire and the walls to slam into while Papyrus is stuck on his back. He still falls when he hits the floor, any noises are dulled under the lingering ringing in his ears.

There may be screaming, and thundering crashes, screeching metal. Two more explosions, further away but still enough to make him stumble even more on his shaky climb to his feet.

The floor drops out from under him, just a few inches, and then it moves, swinging, turning, tilting forward and then back again. It's slow like a waking giant at first, but second for second the enormous mass of the Core picks up speed and the only reason Sans is still kind of on his feet is because he keeps shifting gravity along with it.

He sees dark spots on his right side, where the first explosion left an imprint on his retina, and beyond that the blurry shapes of Pollard being thrown around mercilessly, Grynn tumbling with Freeda on her back, who is awake and yelling something he can't hear. Burning heat bleeds into the lab, a bright orange light filling it up from below and to the left, where the last two explosions have now definitely ripped a hole into the Core.

Sans clenches his teeth, pours all his concentration into his blue magic and runs back to the corner he was flung from, pinning himself to the spinning ground as best he can.

Grynn is trying to help Pollard up, the two of them staggering along the wall. Their voices are almost inaudible over the thundering, clashing, screaming sounds of the Core falling to pieces, but there's a panic in it that Sans can pick up on even over all this.

Three hands materialize in front of him, Sans has hardly any time to wrap his mind around what's happening before two of them grab his arms and the third pushes against his back ‒ Papyrus back. It's helping him stay upright and move forward faster, pulling and pushing him towards the corner he was heading to anyways.

SANS

The signing hands that greet him when he makes it back are not filled with fear and panic like everyone else, but a determined sense of urgency.

HELP ME KEEP IT DOWN

Gaster's black body is more and more fizzling out into lines of code along the borders. He's floating in the middle of the cramped room and using all his remaining hands to hold down the machine's frame, push it to the floor to keep it from falling and breaking.

The wall on the right is gone, blue sparking flames are roaring inside the massive hole punched into the Core, eating away at panels and melting cables with alarming speed. At least here the outer wall of the Core hasn't been breached yet and Sans can't see all the way outside, but the way it's rapidly growing larger, one tiny explosion after another ripping it apart and speeding up the process, has Sans' hands shaking roughly as he throws his magic out over the machine.

"What will you do?" he yells over the noise building up everywhere around them, his voice almost unrecognizable, scratchy from fear as it is. The hands let go of him and with a torrent of blue, he presses himself, Papyrus and the machine to the floor, keeping them all in place while the ground spins beneath them.

Something shatters behind him, he can make out labored breathing and pained gasps. Nobody is helping Grynn and Pollard to stay on their feet and Sans has no idea how they managed to climb the steep, turning, spinning slope up to this corner, Grynn all the while carrying Freeda on her back and pulling Pollard along by his arm.

They make it inside with the last of their strength, slumping against the small portion of wall that's still standing in the back; just before the brutal noise of metal being ripped apart sounds through the lab, then the ground tilts up further with a jerk ‒ and suddenly, the wall is the ceiling and the floor is the wall.

Just for a second, the machine lifts up and starts to fall, but then Sans finds the right direction to move it in and slams it back against the now vertical floor. He himself is spinning in the air along with Gaster, too disoriented to do much but pull himself in ten directions at the same time to stay where he is. Papyrus is squealing on his back and he doesn't know if it's from fear or if he's actually having fun.

They end up hanging upside down in the middle of the room, his hands are stretched out towards the machine, continuously pouring everything he has into keeping it safe. Behind him, he can still hear the other three and he glances back to see where they fell against the wall that's now the floor, Pollard's shield above to keep them safe from falling debris.

"Gaster," he hears Freeda's pained, choked and furious voice. "Shut it off! NOW!"

Gaster's hands are back to working on the machine, shifting its components into place with little clicking sounds. A persistent hum starts up in the distance, or rather, it was always there and now grows loud enough to be audible even over the chaos surrounding them.

FUCKING IDIOTS, a few hands take the time to sign rudimentarily with just one or two fingers, not once interrupting their actual work.

YOU THINK THIS IS MY DOING?

WE'RE BEING RIPPED APART BY MAGIC EMISSIONS

I'M TRYING TO FUCKING SAVE US!

The hum becomes a droning noise. Its pitch slowly rises, grows shrill and loud in Sans' ears like the ringing from the explosion. The way the lab keeps shaking, moving, spinning around tells him unambiguously that more explosions are happing, the stifling heat a clear sign for how deeply the Core must be hanging into the lake of fire underneath already ‒ but the loud, monotonous tone suddenly cancels out every other sound outside their little corner.

~click

The machine is switched on.

For a moment, all light is pulled away.

Sans floats in complete blackness, a feeling he knows now, but if he drops his magic he feels himself bumping into things, so he's still in the lab.

And the feeling of red returns, stifling, powerful, with a vengeance that makes him gasp for breath. A little red heart glows in the darkness, slowly growing brighter. Then glaring with bright, sharp light, dousing everything in red. The shrill hum starts up again and rises impossibly, higher and higher until it's not even a sound anymore, just something sharp in Sans' ears that's canceling out all the rest.

Things move in the air around him, things he can't see, only feel as they whip past him towards the soul where it's beating harshly in its glass cage, pushing out red and pulling in the rest. Like a strong, clawed hand around his soul Sans feels himself being pulled forward, to the light, to the red and his hands flail through the air in panic as he pushes against it with his blue.

DROP YOUR MAGIC

Gaster is closest to the red and he stands still, unmoved, his hands frantic silhouettes against the light.

IT'S PULLING IN THE EMISSIONS

DON'T USE MAGIC AND YOU'LL BE SAFE

That's what it is, Sans' hectic mind realizes as he lets go of his own soul and drops to the oddly still floor. The things that are speeding through the air around him, the little pieces of magic that accumulated into a horrible storm to break the Core apart. Somehow he feels it as they zip past him, feels with certainty that it's not just the ME from inside the Core; the machine is pulling it in from everywhere, sucking up the ME from the whole Underground.

Sans stands up on the floor that used to be the wall, a roaring wind all around still pushing him forward, though he can brace against it now and stay where he is. A shield shatters to his left, where the three scientists are cowering against the same wall. Freeda is the only one standing upright, balancing on one leg with a hand braced against the wall, wearing an expression far more intense than Sans would have ever thought her capable of.

But the red is growing, shining brighter and whining shriller, a dizzying vibration in the air that fills up his bones and something about the feeling, the small sounds breaking out in his head again, doesn't feel right at all.

"Where is it going!" he yells over the noise at Gaster's back. "The ME, where are you sending it?"

Because the voices bleeding into their world, whispering in Sans' mind, aren't the same as before, these are new voices, scared ones, panicked ones. He doubles over and presses his hands to his temples.

There are screams, children crying in his head, a thousand voices begging for help just before a sudden surge of even brighter light pierces Sans' eyes, and half of them are instantly silenced. Red magic is spilling into the lab in crushing waves, Sans can feel it fill up his bones like before, more and more with every passing second, and with each drop comes a deep, terrified understanding of what's happening. What already happened once, just on a smaller scale.

Because the void should have been empty, not filled with dead people.

Because this is where you end up when your universe gets erased, Other-Sans said.

And should probably ask your Gaster about that, he said.

Because what the machine is doing right now, the immense task of pulling in all this world's ME and pushing it into another universe ‒ that's not something Gaster could have made up on the spot without a lot of trial and error first.

He's done something like this before.

Sans feels how his body starts moving, pushing himself off the wall and towards Gaster without even knowing what he wants to do. But there are screams in his head, the pain and death of another world is burning in his skull and he can't listen to it, he can't. "You're killing them!" he yells, voice breaking in the rushing, magic infused air. "Turn it off!"

He swats at the hands circling around Gaster, tries with all his concentration to push past the dizziness in his head that makes the world feel like it still spins all around him. The cracks on Gaster's face are bleeding red when he turns towards him, expression empty.

I'M SAVING US

I'M SAVING YOU

"No ‒ not when ‒ not if people have to die." Sans' voice is barely a whisper anymore. He can hardly see anything other than the bright light in front of him, Gaster's silhouette reduced to a thin, blurry shadow in the corner of his eye. His feet keep carrying Sans forward, every step pulls hard on his bones and muscles, he doesn't even know what he plans to do. Gaster's hands grab him by the arms and hold him in place with ease.

I'M SAVING YOUR BROTHER

Sans sobs. Once.

Papyrus hasn't made a single sound, he can't feel his hands gripping at his hair or his shirt anymore. Can't turn around to see if he's alright. He can feel him breathing against his back.

But Gaster is a mass of void and code and magic, Freeda's eyes a dripping with red, the skin around Grynn's smile is stretching and tearing, Pollard is cowering in the corner, impaled by red light and his hands melting in front of his eyes. Sans can feel Papyrus breathing, but he can't see what the red is doing to him. Doesn't want to see.

A hint of orange glimmers in the black holes that are Gaster's eyes. His face is right in front of Sans, staring intently. In Sans' head, a child is screaming for their parents.

WE'RE SAVING OUR UNIVERSE

Red keeps trying to push into Sans, he can feel it right there at the edges of his soul, it's too much, way too much. But Gaster's had even more, somehow, he's stronger and Sans can't stop him. Not when he's this weak, not when his soul is too full with his own magic to make space for more red. Gaster had to die to make that happen.

The tears on Sans' face evaporate. His hair clings to his face. His naked feet are slipping away, drops of sweat fly away when he shakes his head, hover in the air and turn into steam.

There is a small, hard spot underneath his collarbone. It seems an eternity ago that they put that in there, a little machine, a tiny thing that was supposed to keep him safe, a magic essence container to suck the magic from his soul when it gets too much. Only if he's having an overload. Only for emergencies.

He faintly remembers being held in Gaster's arms and spinning through the laboratory on a chair. Remembers lying on a table shortly afterwards, scalpels cutting into his soul, screaming without hearing it, but trusting Gaster, trusting him to bring him back safely.

As he reaches into his pocket, his fingers brushing the button on the small remote he always carries with him, he makes sure to remember the pain above all else. The pain of broken bones, of scratching hands on his scalp, of needles everywhere. The pain of holding her in his hands, watching as she dies, the pain of shattering Penny's skull into pieces.

The pain of New Home.

The Room.

The pain of being nothing.

He looks up into Gaster's eyes, the eyes that would watch unerringly as a million souls are burned to ash somewhere else. To save this universe.

Sans' fingers sharply close around the remote.

This universe, he thinks. Isn't all that great.

He presses the button.

It's like fingers reaching straight into his chest.

The world flashes white. His mouth tastes like metal. Any feeling is blocked, pushed away, deemed unimportant in relation to that of his own blue magic being sucked out of his soul. For a just a moment, he is empty.

For just a moment, he knows he's dying.

And then all is red. It breaks into him, burns past his skin, clogs his throat and pierces his eyes, the merciless red rage filling up the empty space in his soul that was left behind.

The little machine in his chest is screeching, burning with the effort of sucking magic out of his soul, it can't keep up, the red is stronger. Blue liquid explodes from his chest when the small mechanism under his collarbone breaks under the strain.

Shards of metal dig into his flesh, blue magic drips from the hole in his skin, but Sans pays no attention to it. The little pager in his hand is creaking, his fingers clamping around it with a foreign strength powerful enough to make the pager dent and break until his fingers are only grasping scrap metal. That's alright, though. It's done its part, his soul is filling up to the brim with red.

There is still screaming.

Gray and white hands stretch out towards him from the light, the center of the machine. Faces, blurred at the edges, melting as they appear and then fade into nothing, the screams dying on their lips just to be replaced by others a second later. A whole universe is dying somewhere, Sans can feel white souls pressing against his own, large and small, good and bad ones. And one after another, they shatter.

Sans lifts his hands, it doesn't even feel like his own body anymore. Something sticky clings to his fingers; melting skin, he thinks weirdly detached when he glances down. His arms are set alight from the inside, glaringly red bones shining through his flesh, a web of veins curling around them, pumping magic and not blood. There's shouting from both this world and another, panic, fear, anger. White, bony hands lunge for him to hold him back and Sans doesn't even feel it.

There is a goal, and the red in his veins forbids him to think of anything else. He doesn't know whether he moves, or if it's a shortcut, or if he pushes Gaster out of the way ‒ he just sees the machine, suddenly right in front of him, his sticky hands pressing against the vial in the middle. The light is burning his eyes, but there's no feeling in his face anymore; whatever that hot, thick liquid falling from his eyelids and running down his cheeks is, it doesn't bother him at all.

Looking at the red soul in its glass cage ‒ it's almost like holding her soul close again. Like watching her slip right through his fingers, crying for her son and dreaming of blue flowers. He's too far away now to hear the red soul's dreams, to feel its regrets, to hold it in his hands.

But he's close enough to know they share a goal. And he has no clue how the machine works, no idea what to do with the little tubes and vials, he just knows it's a bridge to a different place. They just need to break it off somewhere in the middle.

And maybe there is someone crying on his back as he falls to his knees, his hands dragging along the glass and leaving pieces of melting flesh behind. Maybe there is a scratchy, angry yelling in his ears from skeletal hands signing frantically next to his face as he thinks of the ME rushing past him, thinks of reaching out to it with his mind and pulling it with him.

With soft little clicks the glass tubes change their place. The red soul knows where to go, and Sans knows how to shortcut. He pulls everything in as close as he can, all of the storm that's swirling around them ‒ and together, they change its path.

~blip.

the funny thing is

do you honestly think you don't deserve this

this is how it's supposed to be

do you honestly think you don't deserve this

you are here of your own free will
except I'm not

eeny, meeny, miny, moe

do you honestly think you don't deserve this

no one cares if you let go

seems very
I bet it's really boring in here on your own

knock knock

seems very
do you honestly think you don't deserve this

who's there
you don't exist

promise me something

everything functions perfectly
without you

seems very

the thought
the thought
the thought

terrifies me

do you honestly think you don't deserve this

please forget about me

seems very
very
interesting

please forget about me

please forget about me

please forget about me

"San."

please forget about me

"San ok?"

please forget about me.

"Ok? San ok? Ok?"

please forget...

please

forget

about

"SAN NO SLEEP!"

me?

Me.

Sans opens his eyes.

There are hands on his face. Small ones. Patting his cheeks impatiently.

Papyrus' forehead is creased in disapproval. And fear.

They stare at each other.

Papyrus slaps his cheek one more time. "No sleep now." His lower lip wobbles.

It's still weird to stand up, to move in general, when there is only blackness and no directions. No up and down. Nothing. But Papyrus is there, with him, and Sans reaches for him.

A skeletal hand on Papyrus' shoulder pulls him back.

"Whoa there." Other-Sans sounds calm and nice. He's smiling the sad smile. "Sorry pal, but no cuddles for you two right now. You're, uh, still kinda red there. Might be a bit much for your bro."

Sans looks at his hands. It's hard to see clearly, he realizes now. It seems like there is some thick, milky film covering his eyes and on the right, where he already can't see all that well, he can barely make out anything at all anymore. But the red glow from inside his bones is still visible, lighting up his hands and arms ‒ and likely every part of his body that he can't see right now as well.

When he tries to move his fingers, some of them seem to stick together.

When he reaches up to touch his face, it doesn't feel the way he remembers it. Like things are just kind of in the wrong place. He stops touching it when it feels as if his fingertips scrape over blank bone right under his eye.

The cold fear in Papyrus' eyes seems a lot more reasonable now.

Sans tries to smile and Papyrus almost starts crying. "I'm okay," he assures him quickly, but his voice is hollow and not his own, like it's coming from somewhere else, so he stops.

"Nah," Other-Sans says. "You're really not." The hand that's holding Papyrus' shoulder has a soft red shine to it, Sans thinks as he squints at it.

HE DOES NEED A BIT OF IT TO BE SAFE HERE

Sans jerks back at the sudden appearance of Gaster's hands in front of him, of Gaster's voice in his head. He looks around, finding mostly darkness. And three odd, twisted, gray shapes in the distance, twitching and blurring before his weak eyes.

OR HE'D END UP LIKE THEM

The very moment Gaster "speaks," the void rumbles with a fury that makes Sans and Papyrus cower and raise their hands over their heads. Other-Sans' grin is cruel as he stands up, eyes focused on a certain empty spot in the void and his red hand not leaving Papyrus' shoulder for even a second.

"Yeah, pal," he says, "I'm gonna have to ask you to stay out of this. No one here's really in the mood for your bullshit right now." His posture and voice betray nothing, but Sans can feel the seething anger from his skeletal doppelgänger and even though it makes his insides clench up painfully, he also wonders why it isn't much, much stronger.

Gaster seems to think the same.

YOU'RE CALM

CONSIDERING I'M THE ONE WHO DESTROYED YOUR UNIVERSE

Sans almost expects the void to crack and fall apart under the pressure of a million dead voices screaming in powerless rage.

Other-Sans shrugs. "Well, yeah, that was a dick move, not gonna lie. Nothing I can do about it now." They way he gently rocks back and forth on his heels still tells Sans without a doubt that he would rip Gaster apart right now, if there was anything left to destroy.

"Gotta wonder if you thought this through, though," he continues, his voice growing colder with every word and his wide smile more feral. "How's shoving your world's ME into other universes gonna end the crisis, hm? New ME will just keep building up. How many worlds were you planning on destroying just to keep yours alive? What makes you think yours is somehow worth more than all the others out there?"

Signing hands cannot laugh, but a soft vibration travels through the nothing that makes Sans certain that Gaster just did.

YOU TALK A LOT FOR SOMEONE WHO ISN'T INTERESTED IN MY BULLSHIT

"Heh." Other-Sans turns away from the void. When he looks down at Papyrus, who stares at him with round, curious eyes, his smile immediately softens. "Whatever."

Sans' head starts spinning slowly, his vision whiting out even more. It gets harder to concentrate on anything, but with his veins still pulsing red there is one thought that still seems more important than anything. "Did we save it?" he asks. It comes out more like a slur, his body tilting to the side. Something liquid drops from his face and runs down his neck. "The other universe?"

Papyrus is reaching both hands out towards him with a small whining sound, but Other-Sans just kneels down beside him and pats his back. With the other hand, he lightly grabs Sans' shoulder and helps him to stay upright. "Most of it," he says. "I mean, a big chunk of it was dead already when you started. But you still saved a lot of people."

He looks up into the blackness, his white pupils shining just a little bit brighter. Even if Sans can't see, he follows his gaze. The now calm and soft feeling of ME in the air ghosts over the remains of his skin. It's not a storm anymore, now that it has nothing to attack, now that nothing is trying to pull it anywhere it doesn't want to go. Now it's just a gentle cloud of magic hanging over them. And slowly, piece by piece, Sans feels it disappear into nothing.

"Saved your own universe, too," Other-Sans continues. "For now. Like I said, it's gonna build up again, so you'll guys have to find another, more permanent solution."

Something like a smile pulls at Sans' face and judging from the way Papyrus flinches and looks away, it's probably good he can't feel anything at all. He stares down at his red glowing hands, all but one finger clumped together in a melting, fleshy mass much like Gaster's body. Only it's not made of pieces of the void, it's his own body, his own hands that are falling apart before his eyes. He's glad he can't see that well right now.

"I don't think I can go back," he says.

Weird, but his voice is a little clearer now.

He blinks and it washes away a little bit of the film on his eyes.

At his shoulder, where Other-Sans' hand is still touching him, the red is growing strangely dimmer. The familiar feeling of blue seeps into him instead. With a start, his soul pulses harshly, once. Twice. Then it keeps pulsing and he hadn't even realized until now that it had stopped.

He lifts his head, it makes him less dizzy, and Other-Sans' face is carefully turned away from Papyrus as his eyes grow red. Both his hands are on Sans' shoulders now, with every second Sans regains the feeling in his limbs, his soul, sees his flesh slowly knit back together.

Other-Sans is melting.

Sans lunges forward, palms laid flat against a soft blue jacket and tries to push him away. "Stop!"

The skeleton is not moving under his weak shove, just continues smiling at him as Sans loses the red, feels it sucked out of his bones and into the other one's.

"S'alright kid." His voice is glitching, hissing static and his smile is dripping down his jacket over Sans' hands. "I was a goner already."

He stands up on melting legs, black void jumping in to cut out whole pieces of him. Like he doesn't want them to watch. "Can't help ya with the shortcut back this time. But you know how it goes."

Sans can't move, can't help but stare, even as Papyrus finally careens into him and wraps his small arms around him, burying his face in his neck. Other-Sans looks like he's waving at them, for a second. Then, with one loud snap of glitching code, he is swallowed by black.

From somewhere else inside the void, a surge of overwhelming grief rises up and crashes down. It makes Sans gasp for breath.

When he puts his arms around Papyrus, holding him almost too tightly, he looks down at his hands and sees singular fingers again. No red bones, no red veins are shining through his skin. He's whole again.

In both his own and Papyrus' soul, he only feels one tiny splinter of red, surrounded by blue.

SANS

He still can't see Gaster, so it wasn't just his eyes. But the signs are burrowing directly into his head, along with the voice.

TAKE US BACK

Sans stands up, arms hooked under Papyrus' legs. The void turns around him. He pulls at it, just a little, just how Other-Sans showed him. Moves it into place around him until the three gray spots in the distance are right in front of him.

LEAVE THEM

Three glitches in the system.

Three gray shadows that Sans pulled with him into nothing. Now he watches as Freeda's leg glitches in and out of existence, her face made of stone, empty. Watches Grynn curl in on herself, a growing spiral of self-absorption, a sharp and meaningless grin and nothing else.

THEY DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH RED MAGIC IN THEM

He watches Pollard, a jittering, trembling mess, clutching his head, a black hole where his face used to be. The edges frayed and dripping with dust.

The void moves again as Sans turns away.

THE THREE OF US ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN STILL LEAVE

And that's the reason Gaster just jumped back and forth between universes. Why he didn't even think of the possibility of letting the ME float away into the void instead.

Because he doesn't understand the void.

JUST TAKE US BACK THE SAME WAY WE CAME

He can't leave the void.

I KNOW YOU CAN

Nobody showed him how to shortcut.

SANS

Sans plucks the code with his fingers, sees it unfold before his eyes, a rushing stream of information that Gaster can't see. The nothing around him doesn't bother him.

He got used to it in The Room.

Gaster never did.

SANS!

And Sans pulls at the void. Mind wrapped firmly around his and Papyrus' soul, he pulls them both back into reality.

Without Gaster.

With a brutal shove, pain floods back into him.

He gasps, hits the floor with his knees, takes a strained breath around the pain in his chest. Papyrus clings to him with small, panicked sounds.

The Core is still red, still broken. Sans pushes himself back to his feet. The high-pitched sound of the machine is rising, growing louder and louder, the red light is flooding all his senses and he grits his teeth as he rushes forward. He has to end this, before he's right back where he started.

Three sharp-edged bones is all he can manage, but they fly from his palm and straight into the machine, shattering glass as they go. The noise stutters, the light flashes. Sans sees the machine begin to crumble.

He switches to holding Papyrus up with only one arm, lunges at the machine and wraps his hand around the vial in the middle. With a breathless yell, he rips it out and jumps back, turning to cover Papyrus with his body.

The shockwave hits him seconds later, makes him stumble forward into the wall, a rain of glass falls down around him.

For just one moment, he slumps in relief.

Then Papyrus is slapping his back with his palms, legs kicking the air as he bounces in his arms and babbles "Runrunrunrun!" in his ear.

Sans starts running, the very same moment that the Core begins moving again. The whole structure is infused with a grid of red magic; Sans yelps in shock as the tiles under his feet glitch away, then return a second later, then fizzle into the air as tiny strings of code. He trips, almost falls, keeps running forward and stares with wide eyes at the red magic distorting time all around him.

The holes in the ground are filled back up within milliseconds, only to break apart even more seconds later. Explosions are playing in reverse next to him, he gets pulled towards it and then pushed away again. A broken metal table right in his path lifts up from the ground, fits itself back together and flies up high in the air, higher and higher, then stops, hovers for a while ‒ and comes crashing down again.

Sans shortcuts underneath it, steps on a floortile just as it is lifted up into the air as well. He tries to jump but doesn't have to, an explosion to his left is pulling him right off it, he shortcuts away again before he can get too close. A stream of lava shoots through the floor right in front of him, he yells and covers his eyes.

With his soul pounding loudly in his chest, Sans rushes down the lab in a frantic zig zag course, time warping and changing all around him, speeding some things up and slowing others to a crawl.

It's actually working in his favor when he has to cross the enormous chasm in front of the exit. He forces himself not to think about the risk, about the fact that he doesn't know for how long any of it will hold; the second he sees time flowing in reverse near him, building the floor back up into a stable path, he rushes forward, jumps across the tiles and hopes against hope that he will find the next stable part before everything underneath him breaks away again.

Papyrus pressed against his chest with one arm, the glass vial with the red soul clutched in the other hand, he finally jumps across the last gap. Despite the exhaustion eating away at his magic, he slams one last attack against the exit door, breaking it open with one swift blow. He dashes right past the passenger lift that he and Gaster came here in so long ago, running for the freight elevator instead.

Only small lines of red are still crawling over the walls along this corridor, but he can still hear the chaos behind him and he can't possibly know what the outcome of all this will be. Will time go all the way back to when the Core was whole? Or will it just keep going crazy and finally break the entire thing, taking the whole Underground with it?

Sans grinds to a halt in front of the decontamination chamber and rips a protective suit out of the locker next to it. There isn't one small enough for Papyrus, of course there isn't, so he just grabs one of the bigger ones that they will both fit into. He's sure that's not the point of this kind of suit at all, it hangs off his frame loosely and he can barely lift his feet inside the massive metal boots. But some protection against the radiation is surely better none, he thinks, as he fits a breathing mask around Papyrus' face and connects the tube to his own helmet from the inside.

The vial was sitting on the floor between his feet during this and as he bends down now to pick it up, the weight of the metal shoulder pads makes standing back up again an unexpected fight. By the time he's on his feet and jamming his elbow into the button to open the door, his muscles are shaking uncontrollably and he is dripping with sweat. Papyrus struggles and cries, pressed against his chest and completely covered by the stuffy suit, but Sans doesn't have the energy to try and calm him down, so he just grips him harder so he doesn't slip out of his arms.

He remembers his plan to flee the lab via freight elevator, all this time ago. Just like he predicted back then, there is a simple panel inside, a monitor with a few simple commands, and all he has to do is press two buttons. The elevator lurches forward and Sans promptly falls on his back, the steel plates inside the suit effectively keeping him down.

Not that he even tries to get back up.

Papyrus is whimpering quietly against his chest, hands fisting his sweat soaked shirt underneath the suit. Sans just breathes.

Even the freight elevator is made of thick, extra heavy glass. He can watch the panels of the Core shifting and rearranging themselves to make space for them. Sans stares and feels himself lulled into a long-awaited, blissful state of emptiness. Blue, electric lights glint and flash above him and for a moment, all the tension bleeds out of Sans at once, leaving him weak and so, so tired.

For the moment, nothing matters anymore. He did all he could.

It's silent. Only two puffing, heavy sets of breathing can be heard, but no sound from outside reaches them in their little glass cage. They slide along their rail, panels shifting and light blinking, until they pass the walls of the Core and orange light floods the elevator from below.

Sans remembers it being impressive, back then, how enormous the Core was and how incredible and scary it seemed. Now, as they slowly leave it behind, he watches it swing from side to side, held by only two struts, parts of it falling and splashing into the lava below. It's dented on one side, crumbling on another, and only step by step does a barely visible red light fit the parts back into place.

On one hand, it's a little bit like watching a star implode, Sans thinks.

But on another, he knows now that the Core is small on the inside. It's no star, no planet. It's just a mechanism.

By the time the elevator comes to a halt, all the support struts are back in place. The Core is seemingly hovering in the air again, the electromagical field surrounding it is back to humming its dull tune, creating the illusion of the whole thing sluggishly pulsating.

Sans peels the suit off of him, arms trembling as he carries Papyrus and the vial through the empty control room.

He doesn't cast a single glance back.

The hallways are empty.

Everyone must have run when they realized the Core was beyond saving. Where they ran to, Sans can't imagine, because if the Core had exploded, everything would have been gone anyways.

He doesn't understand at all how he managed to get back to his feet. All remaining strength has left his limbs, all will to keep going is so far away he can't even remember what it feels like. His feet are bleeding again as he drags them along the gray corridors. Cuts from when the machine exploded are all along his arms, he didn't notice those before. His soul feels shriveled and dry, even just the thought of a single shortcut makes him feel like melting again.

The only reason he's even walking, he thinks, bent forward with Papyrus' weight on his back again, his little feet happily kicking the air as he twists and turn to take in every boring new detail, is because he has no idea what else to do. The thought of just sitting down, slumping against some wall and staying there, is so tempting that if he gives in, he knows exactly he might never stand up again.

So he walks.

His steps are slow and small. He doesn't know where he is going. When he stops for a few minutes to stare at a floor plan at the wall, it turns into a monumental task just to start walking again. But Papyrus is pulling at his hair, kicking lightly at his sides and making annoyed little sounds, and it all helps him to go back to moving. Now with a nonsensical, vague idea of where he's going, at least.

The air is warm when he gets there. Somehow, it smells sweet. Colorless leaves rustle under his feet and lightly fly up into the air. Only now does he wonder where they even come from.

Gray walls greet him, silently.

The windows are standing wide open, white curtains billowing in the soft wind. Sans' hand reaches out to touch the door. It almost feels soft under his fingertips. It smells like wood.

His forehead drops against the door. He knows it's only warm inside, he knows he's standing in the wind and it's actually cold. But he still feels the warmth seep through the wood and into his skin, feels it curl around his soul like strong, protective arms.

Something hot and wet runs down his cheeks.

Hastily, he blinks his eyes back open. When did he close them?

First, he lifts Papyrus from his back and sits him on the ground beside the door. He doesn't understand why and how, but Papyrus doesn't seem even remotely tired; he immediately reaches for the leaves, crunches them up between his fingers and lifts them to his face, inarticulate noises of wonder tumbling out of him. Bouncing up and down he waves his hands at Sans, trying to show him his incredible discovery that leaves exist.

Sans is holding the vial in his hands.

The red soul inside is not shining brightly now, not tearing worlds apart. It's not even all that angry anymore. It just sits there between his palms, pulsing quietly, glowing just a little. A weak source of warmth in Sans' hands.

His thumbs stroke lightly over the glass. It's full of scratches now, small little edges that cut into his skin, but that's alright.

It's dead, it can't hear him. He closes his eyes, presses the warm vial against his face. When he whispers "Sorry" against it, his breath fogging up the glass, it's for no one's benefit but his own.

The wind is just a quiet breeze. The rustling of the leaves is hardly louder than a sigh. Papyrus is gurgling softly to himself.

The tiny clinking sound when Sans puts the vial down in front of the door echos through his mind like a clap of thunder. He sways on his feet when he takes a step back. Takes a long, deep breath. Puts a hand on Papyrus head.

"Papyrus," he says. Repeats it a few times until he's looking at him. "Wait here."

Papyrus' eyes are big and round and black, as they always are. Now that they're staring directly back at Sans, he finally sees the exhaustion in them too. Papyrus tilts his head to the side and lifts his hands again, this time as a prompt to pick him back up.

Sans shakes his head and gently pushes his hands down. "No. You stay here for a bit."

Confused eyes follow him as he straightens up and takes a few steps back. Sans points at him, the other hand raised with its palm towards him, and fights to put a strict expression on his face. "Stay."

He raises a hand to the door and knocks loudly, three times.

And then

~blip

he disappears.

Sans falls against the wall, just around the corner from New Home. He can't see it, but he can hear everything.

Papyrus screams.

Just a short, confused yelp at first. But then, after a moment of silence, a piercing wail breaks out of him, the pure horror of being suddenly alone tearing through the calm silence of New Home.

Sans screws his eyes shut, presses the heels of his hands over them until bright spots start blinking behind his eyelids.

It's alright, it's okay, he won't be alone for long.

Papyrus is crying now, wet, hitched, panicked breaths interrupting his loud screams.

The last time Sans left him alone, the scientists stuck a needle in his eye. Sans knows, he knows that, he knows he's scared but this is better, this is better for him. He slides down the wall, face pressed against his knees and hands pulling at his hair.

And screams turn into shrieks, a sound that hurts Sans' throat just listening to it. He wants to press his hands over his ears, but he forbids himself from doing that.

Why has the door not opened, why has no one come to look yet? They must have heard him by now!

The cries get chopped up by frantic breaths, too small to make much difference, but somehow screaming is more important than breathing right now. Sans curls up tighter, trembling, biting back the sobs in his own throat.

It's better this way. It must be. Anything would be better than being stuck with Sans an entire life.

Papyrus doesn't deserve him.

Sans certainly doesn't deserve Papyrus.

Papyrus is screaming his name into the void. "SAN!"

The door doesn't open.

"SA- SANS!"

Sans chokes on his own breath the first time he hears him say his name correctly, a shrill wail laced with agony and mortal fear. It's a physical pain that shoots through him, makes his soul stutter and grind to a halt, before picking up again and hammering against his chest.

"SANS!" Suddenly it's coming closer, leaves rustling loudly, then hands and feet are slapping against the hard ground.

Sans jumps to his feet, not thinking anymore, the sharp pain in his chest pulling him forward as he dashes around the corner.

The crying turns into a sound so shrill it makes the blood rush in Sans' ears. Papyrus is standing on his feet, halfway down the path away from New Home already, hands outstretched and grabbing desperately at the air. Tears and snot are coating his face, his face that has become blue from screaming. When he sees Sans he wobbles forward, crashes to the floor and immediately picks himself back up. His nose is scratched up and bleeding from hitting the ground.

Sans has wasted his very last drop of energy on the most cruel shortcut he could possibly ever perform in his life. His legs carry him forward, every step is agony, but he pushes past it, lifts Papyrus back up and clutches him to his chest.

He falls back, hits his head against the floor, but not for one second does he let go of his brother. The screams are muffled against his shirt now, a constant, breathless stream of "Sans Sans Sans...!"

Sans can't breathe, just sob. His arms shake, his shoulders tremble, his face is pressed into Papyrus' hair. The smell makes him cry harder.

I can't do this, he thinks.

And he has no idea if he means leaving Papyrus or raising him himself.

Both.

Right. Both.

But as his cries slowly turn into nothing more than hiccups, he realizes that one of these options would be infinitely more painful for Papyrus.

It really seems like he can't make himself get off the floor this time.

If he does, he'll have to leave.

If he does, he'll have to take Papyrus away from here.

Because Sans can't stay in New Home, he can't, there is a vial with a red soul in front of the door and the thought of staying when they're not alive anymore makes him sick to his stomach.

If he gets up, he'll have to find some way to keep going.

That wasn't the plan. The plan was to give the soul back, to let Papyrus be happy, and then ‒

Sans stares at the gray ceiling, thinks back to being put to sleep. How much he dreaded it, how it used to scare him so much.

How much he'd embrace it now.

Papyrus climbed off of him minutes ago already. Tears forgotten, panic gone, how is that so easy for him? Now he's babbling to himself, waddling around to collect leaves and dump them on Sans.

Sans wiggles his toes. The carefully constructed pile of leaves shifts and Papyrus squawks in indignation, pounces on his feet and holds them still.

Sans grins. Leaves cover his face, so Papyrus can't see it, and that's not fair, he suddenly thinks. Papyrus should know he's making things better.

So Sans sits up, so Sans stands up, leaves stuck in his hair and dirt covering his clothes.

He holds out a hand and Papyrus grabs it, no second thoughts, no hesitation.

Sans is shaking in fear.

But walking away from New Home, his brother's hand clutched in his own, he glances back at the dark corner next to the house, where he stood with Gaster. And he silently promises to himself ‒

‒ he'll try his best to be useful.

To his brother, at least.