Chapter Text

“I really should have killed you when I had the chance.”

Alphys hung up the phone.

It stayed in her hand for a second. She wrapped her claws around it, feeling, and considered throwing it down onto the stony floor as hard as she could. But it wasn’t really her phone. It would have wiped the anger off her face for a second-- the false smile, her eyes… but it wasn’t really her phone, and it wouldn’t last long. She clenched it for one last second, and then silently held it out for Sans to grab.

“sorry,” he’d say. “that wasn’t easy, i can tell.”

Alphys stopped grinning. It had felt good to yell at Frisk for… just a second. Just a second. “I’ve been thinking about… what to say… for months.”

Sans murmured, “yeah, that makes two of us,” and delicately took the tiny flip phone from her hands.

The throne room looked a lot better than it really was. From the ceiling, dotted with holes leading to the surface, faint beams of moonlight landed on the flowers below, glowing, shimmering. The gold chair at the front hadn’t been used in a year. In the dimness, the splotches of light, there the two of them were-- the last two left who could lead. And, Alphys reckoned, they were running out of monsters to lead.

“It went to voicemail. Maybe… Frisk’s dead.”

“i have a feeling nothing is gonna kill that kid anytime soon.”

“Yeah,” she admitted.

Sans shoved his phone into his pocket.

The two of them walked close. Not… too close. Just enough. It felt safer that way-- at least Sans felt a little safer. He always assumed that he was impossible to beat, that if the circumstances required, he could save people… he could help people… but first he couldn’t save Papyrus, and then he could hardly save himself. The halls next to them rumbled with every footstep gently, the faint light from the other end of the tunnel their only guide.

Then it was the Last Corridor, with the same hazy blue reflections emerging from the line of tall windows to their right, and a little stain right in the middle, where Frisk had given him a wound in the stomach. It was held back, in some ways. It was purposeful. Sans had seen that kind of purpose before. Somehow, he sensed a lack of pure evil in the child, even though saying such a thing to Alphys would probably make her scream.

“so that’s it, then? nobody else you want to call, while we’re at it?”

“I-I guess that was tiring enough.”

“napstablook? uh… anyone?”

“Blook’s… Blooky’s fine.” She stumbled a little in her walk. Sans reached out as fast as he could and took Alphys’ hand silently. She turned to him, and managed one of those exhausted little smiles-- the split-second ones, the ones nobody could notice. Except Sans. He saw them every time. He needed to see them.

“what about MK?”

*Alphys jerked up suddenly and froze.

“Oh, God. I s-sent him to Snowdin, w-without… with… without his phone…” She shook and started to speed up down the deep blue hallway.

Sputtering, Sans followed behind. “it’s only been twenty minutes! he’s probably not even there yet!”

“I-I gotta,” she managed, “I gotta get to him in time. Could be some of the ones from the ruins, a-after him.”

“you’ve gotta take a breath, alphys.”

She took a breath and stopped in her tracks. It didn’t help. Alphys took a glance out one of the windows-- a hazy, dim-lit path carved into the rock, leading to the surface. One of the windows was broken. She’d woken up late at night crying once and tried to get out through that window, but… the barrier was everywhere. All around them. Always. “We can’t l-lose any more people.”

“i know. and we can’t lose you, either.” He gave his own little grin, wider than usual- but his brow had been stuck looking forlorn since Papyrus died. His… bone-brow. Alphys would have laughed about it, a very, very long time ago. “just take it easy. we’ll take the ferry. it’ll only be ten minutes.”

Alphys knew the route pretty well. She’d taken it more in the last year than in her entire life. Before, visits to the throne room, to Asgore… were rare. But now it was every day. Every hour. Every waking second, she was a leader… and she had to be a leader.

A little glance to her side, and the new Queen saw what she ruled. Endless, it seemed like. Stony buildings rising from the earth- the City. It was bustling, somehow. Half the population and it was bustling. She supposed there were a lot of people in the distance who actually respected her, their numbers thin and their heads low, but with their eyes facing her like a gleaming jewel of hope, which she was not. There was a plaque, a large monolith-like stone by the stairs leading down to the city, with her policies engraved upon-- which she supposed she should probably revise again. But there wasn’t time, and the two of them kept hurrying down and down stairs and steps and elevators until they’d reached the river by Hotland.

Sans stepped carefully onto the thin, flat boat.

It rocked gently in the cool, dark waters. Alphys followed suit. There wasn’t a lot of room, but… enough.

The hooded figure at the front, who had gotten very familiar with the two, nodded in sync with the waves underneath and asked lightly, “Snowdin or Waterfall?”

“the former,” said Sans. He preferred being gentle with the River Person. The ride was smooth, not too long. The riverside had a few good people on it. Now that Waterfall and Hotland were the only places people travelled, and the boat had become something of a public tool, plenty of monsters clustered around the riverbed and waited for that hooded figure to pass by.

River Person whispered something to the boat and it started sliding down the river in a timely fashion.

“I w-would feel a little better if you were still cracking jokes, Sans,” said Alphys.

“little out of it… something caught me off guard.”

“Y-Yeah. Me too.”

She was shaking a bit. Anxious. Her toothy face was wracked with it, anxiety, up and down, the kind Sans was all too familiar with. “you’re good to your brother. good like undyne was good, y’know?”

“I guess,” said Alphys. She managed a weak laugh.

The scenery descended from hot, to warm, to cold, very quickly. Ash turned to ice, and then there were snowy trees on either side. The road hadn’t been traveled in a while. Everyone in Snowdin had run-- if they weren’t dead already. Sans had watched it happen. Sans had let it happen. When Papyrus approached, when he just wanted to talk, when he just wanted to…

Don’t think about it, Sans.

His left eye blinked on instinct, like it always did when he reminisced about his brother. His winter coat bobbed in the gentle wind, and as the air grew colder and colder, both Sans and Alphys took a deep breath-- and prepared to enter the ghost town.

Alphys dug her claws into the snow to keep her balance.

A low fog hung over Snowdin. It was so familiar and present, like it had always been there, but in the back of her mind was a cozier place-- one she’d occasionally ride to from her lab if she wanted a break from the heat. Her and Sans had met in passing… and he used to tell her about the woman on the other side of the door. About Toriel. She knew it was Toriel now, but not then. What if she’d figured it out? What if… but it was just an if. Snowdin was real, and very, very abandoned. Save for a few shadows in the distance.

Sans took his step off the boat and thanked River Person nonchalantly.

“I see somebody,” said Alphys. Her body felt heavy. The cold had a weight.

“why did you send MK here in the first place?”

“To put flowers on… t-to… for Papyrus.”

“...oh.”

“I probably should have told you. I-I know you don’t like surprises much, anymore.”

“it would have been a nice surprise. ...thanks.”

She started her way through the ice toward the figures in the main part of Snowdin. It took longer than she expected-- every step, she sunk a little bit. But then she heard a voice-- Monster Kid, and alongside Sans she trudged as fast as she could.

A Migosp and Vegetoid, yelling and picking on him or something. It was lost in the noise. Alphys and Sans burst from the fog, both standing at about the height of the three monsters in front of them, including the Monster Kid, his striped armless self crouched down in terror.

On instinct, Sans’ left eye started to glow. A faint blue. An icy blue. He prepared to reach up his arm, but not before Alphys extended her own-- beckoning him away. She shouted, “No,” and then turned to face the two harassing MK, who was clutching in his mouth a bundle of golden flowers.

Act

Vegetoid

Dinner

Alphys and the Vegetoid ate some vegetables together amidst the battle. She seemed pretty good at avoiding whatever bits of magic the two were throwing at her, and somehow didn’t mind.

Mercy

Spare

Chuckling, it hopped off into the fog.

Seemingly in a spell, the Migosp suddenly burst out into apologies and whimpers, wrapping one of its arms around Monster Kid, who still had an utterly confused and terrified look on him.

“hey, kid, glad you’re OK,” said Sans, coming close.

Sans snatched the bundle of flowers from Monster Kid’s mouth.

MK erupted into a flurry of, “I don’t like it here,” and, “Thank you, s-sis,” He skipped over to her, and they gently hugged. Migosp let off one last apology, and then sped off into the snow to catch up with Vegetoid.

A strange feeling went through Sans.

“deja vu,” he murmured.

“What?” asked Alphys.

“i feel like… i’ve seen that before. somebody dealing with monsters like that.”

She shrugged. “I-I was just, uh, trying to be nice.”

“heh. it worked.”

Alphys said softly, “MK, take the boat to Waterfall and stay home until I get back, alright? I’m sorry I forgot to give you a phone.”

He sniffled. “O-OK. I hope the flowers aren’t messed up.”

“No,” she murmured. “It’ll be fine.”

And then Monster Kid slipped into the snow, and the two left remaining took a glance at each other.

Sans didn’t feel at home. His last house, the one Papyrus actually owned… well, that was old and rotten by now, probably. Grillby had moved. All the monsters he used to buddy up with, the dogs, they were gone, too. All that was left was the wind, the soft soft wind, and it wasn’t nearly enough. He tried to keep light hearted. He tried to think of a joke. But… nothing really came to mind.

The two of them knew where they were going. In Sans’ bony fingers, the bundle of starting-to-wilt flowers, waving in the air as he clutched them tighter than he had clutched anything before. Slowly they went past the bar, then the inn, and then the shop, and then into the woods.

Flurries in the air. Dim. Lit only by the faint lights on the ceiling of the cavern. Sans pressed his hands further into his thick winter jacket.

There it was.

A little wooden cross with his brother’s name on it.

He…

didn’t know what to say.

*Sans sat down the flowers in front of Papyrus’ grave.

“sorry,” he said only. That was all he felt like he could do.

Alphys leaned to her left and wrapped her arm against Sans, held him tight, and the two just stared at the ground.

“we could go and see undyne’s, if you wanted.”

“N-Not right now.”

“it’s been so long since things were normal.”

“This… I don’t know. I g-guess this is just how it is.” She shivered from the cold.

Sans thought about something horrible.

And then he thought about something a little less horrible-- about Frisk in the hallway, the Last Corridor. Among the bright rays, the blinding sunlight through half-filtered windows, the child had simply… wounded him. He always thought Frisk was just holding back, but… somehow, he knew that wasn’t the case. Every movement was planned. From the start, Frisk knew what Sans would do, and how to do what they wanted. It wasn’t out of respect or guilt that Sans was spared-- Frisk was just in a hurry.

Oh, no.

Alphys coughed, her breath icy in the air.

“can you… come with me? i think something’s wrong.”

She turned to Sans, who had a little tear in his left eye. “Something’s… w-wrong?”

“yeah… just…” He fished in his coat pocket and produced a silver key. “i think i ought to tell you a few things.”

Back to Snowdin.

Where had Alphys even been, when Frisk was killing in the forest? With their hands bloody. With their eyes red. Filled with Determination, the kind she swore she’d never give to any living thing ever again. When that kid got to town, she could have done something after evacuating them. She could have used a trap, or a weapon. She could have sicced Metta on it… but by the time any of those things made sense to her, it was too late. They were all gone. They were all…

gone.

Sans was urgent. He nearly jogged through town, his jacket bobbing up and down with every movement, and his bony expression fading fast. The figures of trees on either side disappeared in Alphys’ peripheral as she struggled to keep up. The two were headed toward Papyrus’ house, and she hadn’t a clue why.

And then the ground, all of a sudden, rumbled. Just once. Just for a second. But they both noticed.

“What was that?” she asked plainly, her breath caught on the wind.

“something horrible,” said Sans. He didn’t sound like he was joking. Not any more.

Footsteps left in the whiteness behind them leading all the way to Sans’ old house, and then to the small, worn footpath leading to a back door. At first Alphys was skeptical, expecting something fun or happy, but… the door didn’t look like it had been opened in years. He slid the tiny metal key into the lock, and swung it open.

The interior was metal-plated and heavy, and the air almost seemed to rush out into the cold. As Sans entered, Alphys followed, and a sense of warmth filled the room.

A set of blueprints. Drawers. Papers. A tarp kept over a big, heavy thing in the corner. Ignoring the rest, the bony short figure ran over to the tarp and uncovered it.

Another rumble. The whole world felt wrong.

“What… is that?” she asked, staring at the massive hunk of metal and electronics in front of her. A half-dismantled device with a glass case, big enough for a few people to fit inside.

“a time machine, of sorts,” said Sans.

Sans fiddled with the controls on the front of the machine.

It was all garbled up. But… in a way, it made sense to him. He could, at the very least, detect inconsistencies-- with time. With space. And right now, at that moment, there was one very, very big inconsistency. Frisk.

Alphys was speechless. “it’s like i thought,” he said to her. “i had a feeling, from the beginning, that… frisk… wasn’t doing this for any good reason. they knew beforehand, every step we made, every choice we made.”

“What are you talking about? L-Like… they did this before?”

“yes… yeah. and at the end of each run through…”

The ground shook violently.

“they just wanted to hear the phone call, alphys. that was the last thing they wanted to hear. so they performed just t-the right things. killed toriel. killed papyrus. killed undyne…”

Alphys was in disbelief. Mouth open. Eyes wide.

“it went to voicemail… so we had some time. but now we’re done for. now frisk is done with us.”

“What… what do we do? How do we stop it?!”

“we can’t.”

The air didn’t feel so warm anymore.

Sans tore more useless bits off his machine. He only needed to activate a few functions now. It didn’t matter what he broke. Soon enough, very little would matter.

“from what i’m reading… seeing… frisk wasn’t always bad. isn’t always bad. so often, they might even be the… savior of the underground.”

“Are you k-kidding?!”

“the frisk we met might be different than the others. so… if, hypothetically, using a machine with similar capability, we exited this timeline…”

“Sans… a-aren’t you talking about Determination? That’s how Frisk did it all, right? We can’t use that again. Last time I tried experimenting with that, I… they…”

“that won’t happen to us.” He slid open a door into the glass case, where a single keyboard and monitor sat inside. He stepped in, and beckoned for Alphys to do the same. Desperately, she shook her head.

“Then how do we get there?”

“we ride the power of the reset like a wave, to get to the other timeline with our memories intact. that's what this machine can do.”

“B-But MK… Napstablook… all the monsters here, they'll...”

The wooden part of Papyrus’ house collapsed with the quake underneath them. Alphys was thrown off balance, sinking her claws into one of the tables. Nervously, Sans extended a hand.

“they’ll be gone. erased. they’ll forget themselves and each other. if we don’t save ourselves… everything that happened here, every struggle and sadness was for nothing.”

Shakily, her eyes welling with tears, Alphys grabbed Sans’ hand and took herself into the glass case. Just before he closed it, she burst out, “Wait!”

“what?”

“The p-phone. Please.”

Alphys took the phone from Sans’ coat pocket.

She dialed a number.

…

…

“Nap-sta-blook. Sorry if you called the wrong number, I would remove mine if I could, but…”

“Blooky, i-it’s me.”

“Alphys?”

“I’m the r-reason Metta is gone. I’m the reason everyone is dead. I’m sorry. I’m s-so sorry… for everything that’s about to happen. I-I’ve gotta go.”

“Wait… please… if it’s not a bother… what is going on?”

Alphys hung up the phone.

Sans took the phone and threw it outside.

Alphys shivered.

Sans closed the door.

The inside was nice and cool. It felt calm. There was no noise and no vibrations. Outside, everything looked as if it would disappear.

“When… will we get there?”

“right before frisk fell into the mountain. except… they’ll be good this time. they’ll be a good kid.”

“Undyne… Papyrus…”

“i g-guess they’ll all be… back. like nothing happened.”

Alphys swallowed.

“Why didn’t you ever do this earlier?”

“i did.”

“...What?”

“somebody named gaster made it, and it’s pretty much what ended up… well, he’s like the people out there. he was forgotten. erased. reset into nothingness. you and him used to be good together, actually.”

Alphys sat against one wall and slid down into a short sit.

“I don’t remember him.”

“i guess you wouldn’t, anymore.”

The metal around them creaked.

“What do people normally do… when the world’s ending?”

“crack jokes, i guess?”

“Uh… I-I don’t really have any.”

“drugs, or jokes?”

*Alphys chuckled a little.

“you know… i just want to see toriel. after all this and i still haven’t even met her face-to-face.” He held his hands together from the chill.

“I-I want to see Undyne...”

“and papyrus.”

“Asgore, too.” Alphys started to smile at the thought.

“look… if this works… call me, OK? call me on the other side.”

“O-Okay. I won’t forget.”

“i won’t forget, either.”

“...See you.”

Sans and Alphys stared at one another, their weak eyes stained blue, and waited. It got colder and colder, until they couldn’t move their hands or their legs, and the surface of their glass cage was slick as ice. The world ended, and just in the nick of time, their consciousnesses left it.

*Monster Kid yelled into the darkness...

“‘Sis?! Alphys?!”

“Sans?!”

“What’s happening?!”

“Anyone!!”

“H-Help me…”

*But nobody came.

*...

*...

*...

*...

Sans looked around.

Snowdin Forest felt as cold as that glass interior. He spun around lazily, his bones restless. His jacket wasn’t torn up. The trees stood taller than ever. And he saw, right behind him, a tall deep purple door-- the door to the Ruins.

He coughed. A puff of air emerged like smoke from a chimney.

Walked forward and knocked calmly.

“Oh, I thought you had left,” said Toriel on the other side.

Sans took a second to respond. When he did, his voice was cracked and weak. “not yet,”

“Well, uhm… you caught me just as I was going back to the entrance to check for…”

“i know… and, you’ll find somebody this time.”

“What do you mean?”

“and they’ll… they might be good, tori. you’ve gotta trust me when i say… be careful. if it’s someone good, if you can feel it, then take care of them. but if they have… a little red glare in their eyes… i need you to… stop them, alright? screw ‘em up. hurt them.”

“How do you know any of this? I never told you anything about my name! If this is simply another joke…”

“hey, just… act like it is, alright? just a joke. just... forget about it, okay? i know you’ll do fine.”

The voice came again, but Sans edged away from the door. He was shaking, the clat-clatter of his bones barely audible.

Sans reached into his pocket and produced a phone.

He waited.

And waited.

A few really long, painful moments. A few moments with only the chill of the wind. Maybe he’d made it all up. Maybe-- it was his subconscious, punishing him for what had happened before. His left eye glistened blue. It was all gone. Everything he’d gone through, and he was back to being in front of that door, and sixty paces from his brother.

…

(Ring, ring…)

Sans answered the phone nervously.

“S-She’s alive,” sputtered the voice on the other end. “They’re all alive.”

“yeah,” he managed. It was pained. “it… must’ve worked.”

The snow tracks leading back to town were recent. He could see the little bridge in the distance that Papyrus had built, and if he did his best, he could even see his brother’s silhouette, bouncing haphazardly between piles of snow and trees, struggling just to make sense of the world. But it was perfect. It was him. It was… it was…

Sans coughed.

“I thought I imagined everything,” said Alphys. “That it was… that it meant nothing.”

“to that kid, it… didn’t mean anything. it was just another ending, alphys. it was just another line of dialogue over the phone.”

“What do I do? W-What do we do? Are we supposed to… j-just forget about it, then?”

“if we do, is that any different than getting our memory reset?”

Alphys took a breath on the other end, and struggled to hold the phone between her claws, sobbing as hard as she could. If she cried, it was real. If she was talking to Sans, it was still real. If, in the end, at least one other person lived through it, it was real.

“N-No. It’s just as bad.”

“i… guess we’ll be seeing each other pretty soon.”

“Heh… yeah. I’ve got a camera i-in the bush over there, by the way, so that phrase doesn’t really, uh… work, both ways...” She sniffled.

“aw, you’re such a creep.” He managed a tiny chuckle. Sans hadn’t laughed in a year. He had spent so long silent, his unending grin wide, a shadow over his shoulder. But, now… it was like the world hadn’t skipped a beat. For the world, and for Alphys… Sans chuckled, and she did, too. “gotta go check on my brother.”

“Thank you for it all,” she managed to say.

Sans had the feeling it was far from over.

Alphys hung up the phone.