Oh. Oops. This thread is a thing. Fine, then let me just load from save—



——————————————— ——————————— ———————————————



Another Time (Side: Chara)





The first time she woke, she’d thought that she was dreaming.



She had finally died. She had killed herself again, murderous child that she was, and this time it had taken. She had made amends, and attempted to fix it all. And she had been shot; she had felt the bullets tearing through her best, her only friend, while screaming at him to act, to fight, to not stand there and let the real monsters win.



It was her fault. Her plan, to fix her own mistakes. She was the one who’d made him do it. He had always been such a crybaby, so she should have known that he’d refuse to take their lives. Asriel was a good person. Not like her.



She might have welcomed the darkness, if it wasn’t for the thought of what would happen next. All her determination wasn’t enough to save his life, not for long, only for just long enough that they could die at home.



So why? Why was she still alive?



It had to be her penance. Trapped inside a body that moved without her will, forced to watch as someone else took what was hers, her mother’s love. Forced to watch as the ungrateful child threw it all away. She shouted at her to stop, to listen, that Toriel knew what was best, but nobody answered.



Then the other girl misjudged a dodge, stumbling into a stream of flame. It hurt. It hurt! She could see Mom’s horrified expression, but she couldn’t understand. She couldn’t!



And then she woke up, feeling her heart crack just a little.



It had been a nightmare. That was what she hoped, until she realized that she still couldn’t move. Her body still belonged to her—the girl—and she, Chara, was dead. Nothing but a ghost pretending to be a person, a demon that should have died a long time ago. Why she hadn’t, she didn’t know. If this was punishment, then she wished she could die for real and finally end it.



It took little more than ten minutes before she tried to leave again. Just enough time to pocket the pie that Mom had baked. This time she tried to sneak out, but Mom was smarter than that. Possibly she’d set up magic to warn her. Chara didn’t know, she’d refused point blank her parents’ offers to find out how much she could learn.



She fought Mom again, and this time she didn’t make the same mistakes. She hit Mom with a toy dagger, and Chara could see how much it hurt her. Ill will, the most primitive of magic. Some of the most potent, too.



She felt every strike as if it were her own.



She could barely bring herself to say a thing, knowing it would go unheard.



Toriel almost won, and then the world blinked out.



Time reset.



The girl tried to talk. It didn’t work. The clock skipped backwards.



The girl tried not fighting. The flames she couldn’t dodge made her scream, and Chara screamed as well. The clock skipped backwards.



She tried fighting. She couldn’t do it.



She tried sneaking. She always failed.



She lived with Mom for a week, a week full of bittersweet memories for Chara. Where was Dad? Why was Mom living all alone? Why, in the first place, were they in the Ruins? The girl never asked.



Like so many other things, she had broken her family, and she could feel her heart cracking a little more in response. None of this was what she’d wanted.



Mom never lowered her guard.



She tried climbing out where she’d come from, before even meeting the flower, and fell, and broke her back. She didn’t die, but the clock ran backwards anyway. (And what kind of monster was that? She had never seen one that looked like a flower before, nor were they ever that bloodthirsty.)



The next time, she killed every one of the monsters in the ruins just to practice.



It was torture. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream as she broke every one of the rules that held her family together. Not… not that it was together. Her brother was dead, by her own hand. Her father might be dead, because of her mistakes. Her mother had turned into a miserable being. She could tell, even if she couldn’t, her mother moved as if she might break apart at any moment, and didn’t even tell her off when she was at her worst. Everything that Chara had hoped for had gone wrong, her dreams were all dead and gone.



It was almost a relief when she found the strength to kill her mother. A sense of release. It couldn’t get any worse now.



But there was nothing to do, so she started commenting while the murderer cut her way through people that she’d never known. Yes, that was a snow puff. (You idiot.) This was someone’s house. None of it mattered. Time skipped back and forth, until she grew numb to it all.



She watched as the girl befriended a skeleton, and hoped that maybe things were getting better. Then she watched her kill Papyrus, just because she could, because she wanted to see what would happen. It didn’t matter. She reset that timeline, and went back to acting friendly.



Chara would never let herself relax again.



Undyne marked a different change, the first time she wasn’t sure who to cheer on. Humans were terrible, yes—but to kill her just because of that? Well, she might have suggested the same—but for this to be her father’s chief guard? How could that happen? She had been sure that, no matter how bad things had gotten, at least the monsters were still friendly. That half the ones they ran across immediately tried to kill them was… frightening, certainly, but wasn’t that just because she was a murderer? She’d cheered them on, privately, even if she hadn’t bothered to say it out loud.



It didn’t matter anyway. She couldn’t kill her, and soon enough Chara was sick of being spitted on magical spears.



Heh. Sick…



She didn’t feel like making jokes.



She didn’t understand why she’d been brought back.



She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.





——————————————— ——————————— ———————————————



Another Time (Side: Frisk)



Dodge left. Dodge right. Whirl on the spot—twist around the nearly invisible branch, dark grey in a cave—and divert the third between your legs. Undyne always throws them in the same order, she’s predictable like that. Try not to wince as the force sprains your wrist anyway. Leap forward, throwing a hasty punch at her side. Barely a tap. Doesn’t matter.



Don’t look at her face. Don’t feel bad. Hate. You have to hate. That’s what makes it work.



Skid along the ground, perfect three-point landing. Left hand feels like it’s on fire. Pay attention. Where are you. Left? Right?



Somehow, almost directly behind. Chance! Push off, leap forward—



Undyne spins, catching you in the air. Her spear pierces your chest.



Fall to your knees, legs suddenly bereft of strength.



“Oh…” You gurgle. Diagnosis: Lung pierced. It really doesn’t matter. The adrenalin is fading, and it’s getting hard to breathe. It hurts. Quite a lot, in fact. You’re going to die, again, but you’ll hold on for as long as you can just in case she says something useful. It worked with Papyrus.



He was so scared that he’d hurt you, you actually told him that bleeding from a heart damaged by bone shrapnel wasn’t a big deal. You didn’t lie. That death didn’t hurt very much, and not just because he stayed there, fretting over you while you fell asleep. You like Papyrus.



Your mind is wandering. Focus.



“And you’re still there.” Undyne is approaching. Getting harder to see. Are her legs shimmering? “Human. What does it take to kill one of you murderers?”



You only killed two or three dozen this time. You’ve died more than that. You feel a bubble of blood on your lips, responding to your quiet laughter.



But you killed Toriel.



“Sorry, Asgore. Alphys. I guess… I won’t be bringing you a soul.”



No. You won’t.



Undyne grunts, and falls to the ground next to you.



What?



Your body is cold. You feel thirsty, but even that sensation is fading as your brain enters the first stages of oxygen deprivation. Undyne mutters something else, which you cannot hear because your ears are ringing, and in a very distant sense you can tell that you’re wetting yourself. Death is messy, what a good thing it isn’t permanent.



You’ve wondered, for a while, what happens when you go back in time. Does everyone here die, or is it like amnesia? Or, maybe, everything that happened stays happened, and you go somewhere else? You don’t much care, though, except for curiosity. You don’t get amnesia.



“You… dyin’ too?”



You force the words out, even though it makes your head ring painfully, and what little remains of your vision goes black. Your soul, the very culmination of your being… wasn’t that what it said?



You can feel yourself splitting in two, your mind tearing in half. Part of it is staying here, outside you, in your rapidly failing body. Part of it, your soul, is not. With what little determination you still have, you try to slow the separation down. You want to hear what happens next.



“So, I did win. Heh. Heh heh…”



There’s a sound like rustling sand.



Oh…



You did it.



So why does it still hurt so much?





——————————————— ——————————— ———————————————



Another Time (Side: Sans) (Part three of ?)



If you see a human come through, then please, watch over and protect them.



The girl had been crying her heart out, the first time he saw her. It didn’t look like her expression in the photograph, but he knew on first sight that it was her.



A photograph that couldn’t exist, put there by someone who didn’t. Eons worth of energy, spent only to let him know. If she had been a bad person, then it wouldn’t have been such a happy scene, and the sunset in the background had told him all that he needed to know.



She was the one who’d been playing with the timeline for months, wasn’t she? But maybe she just needed a little help. A few friends. Good food. Bad jokes. Fun, mind-bending puzzles to distract her.



He’d hoped that this was one promise he wouldn’t need to regret.



Time was still repeating itself, but now it was making progress. It would stop, start, leap back maybe an hour, maybe only minutes, but generally moving forwards. And if it always seemed to happen while he wasn’t looking, and if her expression grew quieter and sadder each and every time, well, he told himself that it couldn’t be such a big deal.



— — —



Even when she stumbled past his house, bruised and bleeding from a dozen wounds.



— — —



Even when she killed every one of her attackers.



— — —



Even when she killed everyone who crossed her path, everyone who didn’t run away.



The kind of monster who’d deliberately attack a child, even a human child, was by and large not the kind of monster that spent a lot of time socializing, and so she outpaced the rumours. The only ones who knew, were him—Papyrus, who refused to see anything but the best in anyone—and Undyne, who was already dead.



Many of them hadn’t meant to attack at all, but they didn’t understand how fragile humans were. Many didn’t realize she was human.



He stayed on the sidelines, because he didn’t know what to do.



This was why he didn’t like to make promises.



And then, inevitably…



— — —



He looked sadly at the child who stood across from him. She wasn’t smiling. Wasn’t crying, either, and he dearly wished she would. Anything would have been better than this flat, hollow emptiness.



No, he amended, as he saw her face twitch as if in response to a joke. Not just anything.



“So, uh, you…” He began. He’d had this whole speech prepared, something to motivate her to do better next time, but he felt like it’d fall flat. He knew better than to try fighting; that wasn’t the way to reach the perfect ending.



He closed his eyes, which made it easier to feel her soul. It was stained, cracked and so close to breaking, its parts held together by nothing but scar tissue, but it was still one of the most beautiful things he’d seen.



Said the moth to the flame.



“So, uh. Not gonna say anything, are you?”



She’d been covered in bruises, burns and barely-clotted wounds, and one of her eyes was milky white. No, he supposed she’d have nothing to say. She was waiting to see if he’d attack her.



“Eh. You know, Papyrus still thinks of you as a friend. He’s been hoping you’d call.”



Opening his eyes a little, he spotted a mess of melted plastic in one of her pockets.



“...but I guess that wasn’t an option, huh. Maybe if you had, he could have helped you get through more easily, and that wouldn’t have happened. Um.”



Another emotion, now. Impatience.



“I was happy you spared him, but… I guess you’ve heard this a dozen times before, huh. Then I’ll get right to the point. Beyond this hall you will find Asgore. When you reach him, you’re going to decide the future of this world. For better…” He eyed her askance. “Or worse. You’re going down a dangerous path, but you can still go back. As evils go, you’re still half-baked at most. Think on it, okay?”



She walked past him.



He swallowed, as even a brush against his clothes seemed to burn him like acid. If it had come to a fight, the final outcome would never have been in doubt.



Maybe, if he’d known this would happen, he would have acted differently from the start. Taken her in, even if it would have been awkward and would have set people against him. Stop her from needing to do it all herself.



But all he had was a counter. Thirteen times, she’d brushed him off and gone to fight. Less than a minute for him, maybe hours for her.



“I’m sorry,” he spoke to the empty air.