Chapter Text
That's how the story goes…
Chapter 1. The Weight of Seven Hundred Deaths.
The first time he killed you, it was a blur of violent speed.
There was a sudden, blinding flash of crimson light, a warning your mind couldn't process fast enough, followed by the sickening, sharp crack of magic tearing through your head. Then, the world simply vanished.
You jolted awake back at the doors to the hall, your heart was a frantic animal, punching desperately against your ribs. Your fingers touched your forehead, searching for a wound that was no longer there, your skin still screaming from a phantom pain that refused to fade.
The second time was just as swift. The third followed suit. By the tenth, the rhythm of dying had already begun to settle into a grim, predictable tempo.
He stood at the far end of the Judgement Hall, a dark silhouette against the overwhelming grandeur of the room. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, his shoulders hunched in a heavy slouch. The golden light streaming through the high windows stretched long shadows across the floor, light that felt far too beautiful, far too peaceful for a place defined by such cruelty.
His single red eyelight tracked your every movement. There was no heat of hatred in his gaze, only a cold, terrifying certainty. He watched you as if you were already a ghost, merely waiting for your body to realise it was dead.
"Turn aroun', Dollface," he muttered.
Your throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper as you forced the word out.
"No."
His jagged grin twitched. It didn't widen or soften; it merely shifted, a sharp, knowing movement that suggested he had already accounted for your defiance.
"Figured."
The floor erupted. White bones, glowing with a malevolent red hue, tore through the tiles like nothing. You tried to move, but you were too slow, too human, too heavy, too caught in the haze of your own terror. Pain lanced through your leg, then your shoulder, and finally, the world dissolved into a burning white.
Then, the cycle began again.
The deaths lost their individual edges, blurring together into a frantic montage of agony. A bone piercing your chest; the violent, jarring tug of red magic slamming your soul against the floor; the sight of Sans, unmoving and silent, watching you lie in the golden light.
Again. And again. And again.
There were moments of heavy, suffocating silence. Sometimes the only sound was the faint echo of your laboured breathing. Sometimes, he'd make a joke that had no life in the words. Other times, he would let out a long, weary sigh, the sound of a monster who felt you were making this far more difficult than it needed to be.
And then there were the times when you trembled so violently you could no longer stand, times when the sheer weight of those resets threatened to crush you. In those moments, he would look away.
That was when the pain struck the most.
It wasn't the cold bite of the bones, nor the sensation of dying, nor even the involuntary, gut-wrenching screams you could no longer find the strength to suppress. It was the way he averted his gaze. It was as if, in the quiet lulls between the violence, a part of him still recognised the wrongness of it all. It was as if, behind that sharp-tooth grin, he was silently begging you to just stop, to end the cycle once and for all.
But every time you returned to those doors, the fight returned with you.
By the hundredth death, his strikes lost their surgical precision; they became messy, fuelled by a growing, restless tension. By the two hundredth, he stopped pretending to be a calm, composed judge. The "controlled" predator began to fray at the edges.
By the fifth hundredth, the terror had been replaced by a hollow, instinctual muscle memory. Your body began to move before your mind could even process the threat.
Duck. Run. Jump.
You knew to veer right because left was where the bones erupted from the floor. You knew left was where your ankle would shatter; left was where his red magic would snag your soul and slam you into the stone walls with bone-crushing force.
By the seven hundredth, the "hero" had died long before your first death.
You were no longer brave. You were no longer the protagonist of some story. You were nothing more than a raw, trembling thing, barely holding itself together inside the shell of a human body.
You stumbled across the golden expanse of the hall, the cool of your own sweat sticking to your skin while the fine, grey dust of the floor clung to you. Your breath didn't come in lungs full of air anymore; it came in broken, shallow stutters. Your hands shook so violently that you were forced to curl them into tight, white-knuckled fists just to keep them from betraying you.
Sans was still standing, but the composure was gone. A fine sheen of sweat coated his brow, and his chest heaved with heavy, slow panting of someone pushed to their absolute limit. The sheer overexertion of his magic was written in the slump of his shoulders.
"You just don't get it," he said. His voice was low, stripped of its usual sarcasm, sounding hoarse at the edges.
He lifted a gloved hand. Bones rose from the floor around you like a cage of ivory teeth. You tried to react, but your body was spent; you didn't stand a chance.
A bone stabbed through your foot, anchoring you to the ground. You screamed, the sound tearing your throat, but there was no time to recover. Another bone tore through your leg, and then another, pinning you down. A final broken spike pierced through your hand.
You hit the floor hard, pinned there like a specimen under glass. Sobbing took over before you even realised you had begun, the tears hot and stinging against your terrified face. The pain roared through your body, bright, sharp, and sickening, but it was a secondary sensation to the crushing, soul-deep exhaustion that lay beneath it.
Then came the sound of him walking toward you.
Slowly.
The soft, rhythmic scuff of his sneakers against the polished stone was a stupidly normal sound. In the midst of this nightmare, the mundanity of it almost made you laugh, if you weren't already screaming.
He stopped directly in front of you, looming over your broken form. For a long, heavy moment, neither of you spoke. The silence in the hall was deafening, filled only by the sounds of your weeping sobs and his laboured breathing.
Then, he crouched.
His red eyelights burned intensely from the deep shadows of his sockets, the pulsing embers in the dimness.
"It doesn' have to be this way, Sweetheart," he murmured. His voice was softer than it had any right to be. It lacked the rough edges of his usual sarcasm, sounding instead heavy with a weary, quiet longing.
That was what finally broke you.
It wasn't the cruelty of his words that shattered your resolve; it was the lack of it. Beneath the layers of violence, beneath the sharp fangs and the brutal red magic and the never-ending bones that had systematically torn your body apart, he sounded like he truly meant it. It felt as though he were offering a grim sort of mercy, as if killing you over and over again was the only kindness he had left to give.
Through a blurred veil of tears, you stared up at him. Your free hand, trembling, slowly, with every agonising inch of movement dragging a fresh wave of pain through your limbs, you lifted it.
Sans went perfectly still. You braced yourself, expecting him to flinch or pull away from the sudden vulnerability, but he didn't. He stayed frozen, his gaze locked on yours.
You reached out and touched his face. Your fingers curled lightly, tentatively, against the smooth, chilling surface of his cheekbone.
His permanent, intimidating grin faltered. It was only a heartbeat, a microscopic crack in his mask, but you saw it. The monster behind the judge.
"I won't…" you whispered, the words cut off by your struggling breath.
His eyelights shrank, the crimson glow constricting. A storm of unreadable emotions surged across his features: anger, fear, grief, a chaotic swirl of everything he was trying so hard to suppress. You couldn't tell them apart anymore. Perhaps, in that moment, he couldn't either.
His hand twitched.
A bone materialised in the air between you, hovering with lethal intent. It pointed directly at the center of your chest, aimed straight at your soul. You had just enough time to see his jaw tighten, a hard, pained line of resolve, before it drove home.
The world shattered into a thousand shards of crimson.
You woke up screaming. And then, as the echoes of your own voice died away, you were back.
Your entire body was a map of phantom agony. Even though the wounds were gone, your nerves still screamed with the memory of the bones. Your feet felt clumsy and wrong; your hands felt alien. Most of all, your chest felt empty, as if something had scooped out the very essence of you, leaving behind nothing but emptiness.
"Still?" he asked. The question was a low rumble, devoid of its usual bite. You tried to breathe, but the air felt thin.
"You really are somethin' else," he muttered, letting out a single dry laugh. It wasn't a sound of amusement; it was a sound of disbelief, sharp, and humourless huff.
"No." The word cracked as it left your lips, small and broken.
His grin sharpened, piranha-like teeth flashing in the light as he leaned forward just a fraction. "No?"
"No," you repeated, your voice gaining a sliver of desperate strength. Your hands dug into the fabric of your shirt, clutching at the cloth so tightly that if you weren't so utterly drained, you might have torn it right down the middle.
Everything in you was vibrating. It wasn't just tremors of fear anymore; fear had become too small a word for what you were feeling.
It was rage. It was grief. It was the accumulated heat of seven hundred deaths burning beneath your very skin. It was the weight of having cared about him before you ever met him, and the sickening ache of realising the person in front of you was not the version you thought you knew, watching him become a living hell.
Sans' eyelights narrowed into sharp, crimson slits.
"Then tell me," he snapped, his voice cutting through the air like a honed blade. "How'd you know?"
You stared at him, your vision blurring. He took a deliberate step forward, the light catching the tension in his frame.
"How do you know humans won't just kill us again?!" he demanded, the question tearing from him with a raw, desperate ferocity.
The Judgement Hall fell once again into silence. The question hung in the air between you, ugly, and devastatingly real.
And then, you broke.
All the pent-up pain, the exhaustion, and the madness of the resets surged upward, erupting from your lungs in a scream so primal, so visceral, that it felt as though no human throat should have been able to produce it.
"BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THE STORY GOES!"
The scream tore through the grandeur of the hall, echoing off the high ceilings and the stained windows.
Sans froze. Stunned by the sudden, deafening scream. The intense red glow of his eyes flickered, wavering like a dying flame.
You didn't stop. You couldn't. The dam had burst, and the truth was a flood.
"MONSTERS REACH THE SURFACE! THEY MAKE PEACE! THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS!"
His grin, that permanent, intimidating mask, slowly began to dissolve. His mouth settled into a hard, confused line.
"… the fuck you say?" he whispered, his voice barely audible.
A laugh clawed its way out of your chest, ragged and breathless. It carried seven hundred deaths, seven hundred failures, and the unsettling knowledge that you were being killed by a character from a damn story you had been reading for years.
"All of THIS," you said, throwing your arms out in a gesture of hysteria, your voice trembling with the weight of the revelation. "This whole world. The Underground. Snowdin. Waterfall. Hotland. You. Papyrus. EVERYONE." You choked out a sob, your eyes searching his. "It's all fictional!"
For a split second, you froze… you didn't mean to say that… you really didn't…
It was a reminder to yourself. Something you had repeated over and over between deaths whenever the pain became too much. Whenever you found yourself hesitating. Whenever you caught yourself forgetting. He's not real… This isn't real... It's not… A desperate mantra meant to keep yourself intact. But somewhere along the way, the lines between reminding and believing had begun to smudge them together.
And now the words were out. You should have stopped, but you couldn't.
The air in the hall shifted, turning heavy and suffocatingly dangerous. The golden light seemed to dim, as if it itself was trying to hide from the tension.
"You're fuckin' delusional," he huffed, a short, dry laugh escaping him. "Seems the resets are messin' you up good." He was trying to sound mocking, trying to regain his usual swagger, but there was a frantic edge to it, the sound of a man trying to convince himself that you had simply lost your mind.
Delusional…
The very word hit something raw inside. As if seven hundred deaths didn't happen. As if you didn't spend every reset desperately trying to convince yourself that none of this was real. The anger that surged through you was immediate and vicious.
"I wish I was delusional!" you shouted, the words tearing from your throat. "You're fictional, Sans!"
His eyelight flashed violently, and a surge of red magic flared around his hand like a warning. Bones burst from the floor behind him, sharp and trembling with his unstable magic, but they didn't strike; they hovered there, a wall of white pillars caught in his hesitation.
"Enough with the crazy!" he commanded, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous growl. "Just… stop talking. You're fuckin' losing it!"
But you were already walking towards him. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it was the height of insanity. But perhaps after dying over seven hundred times, fear had burned itself out, leaving behind nothing but hollow, hysterical, reckless courage.
Sans lifted his hand higher, his fingers twitching as if to summon a gaster-blaster to silence the madness that had consumed you, but he didn't attack. He was paralysed by the sheer, terrifying conviction in your eyes.
You reached him before he could decide what to do with the chaos in his soul.
Hand flying out, you grabbed the front of his thick red sweater with both hands, your knuckles white against the knitted fabric.
You stood barely over him, but you pulled him upward with a desperate, frantic strength, forcing him to tilt his head up just enough so he had to look you in the face.
"I am not from this world," you said. Every word shook as it left your lips, falling like a confession and a fact all at once. "I am not supposed to be here. Where I come from, you are a character. This is a story. A game. A fanfiction. You. Are. Not. Real."
His sockets went wide, his red eyelight flickering wildly.
"There's supposed to be a human named Frisk," you continued, your voice growing hoarse, all the screaming leaving the words cracking. "They fall into the Underground. They meet everyone. They help monsterkind reach the surface. They prove humans and monsters can live together."
He remained motionless. The intimidating judge was gone. The aggressive executioner was gone. There was no witty remark, no sharp grin, and no looming threat. There was a terrifying silence as the weight of your words settled into the cracks of his soul.
"But I'm here instead," you said, barely holding yourself together. "I don't know how. I don't know why. I woke up in the Underground. In your world, I tried to follow the story because I thought maybe if I did it right, everyone would be okay. But nothing went the way it was supposed to."
Your grip tightened on his sweater, your fingers bunching up the fabric as if you were trying to hold onto the only solid thing in a dissolving universe.
Something shifted in his expression. It wasn't softness. He was too guarded, too broken for that. But something sharp and deep cracked beneath the surface of his mask. A fracture.
"You expect me to believe this shit?" he asked. His voice was low. Too low. It was a dangerous, vibrating rumble that felt like it was coming from deep within his ribs. "You think I'm some kind of an idiot?" He tried to laugh, but it was weak.
Something inside you snapped. After EVERYTHING. He still thought you were lying… Like you were crazy.
"You want proof?" you challenged.
His sockets narrowed, his eyelights sharpening into an interrogative glare. "What?"
"Ask me something! Something I shouldn't know."
The magic around you pulsed, a rhythmic, thrumming heartbeat. For a long, agonising moment, he said nothing. He simply stood there, studying your face with a shivering intensity, as if he could carve the truth out of your very skin if he only stared hard enough.
"What happens to Papyrus?"
Immediately, your anger faltered, leaving as quickly as his question appeared.
Of course. That was his question.
It wasn't the cosmic horror of the possibility of you being from another world, or the fact that his reality was a lie, or even his own existence. It was about his little brother. It was always about Papyrus.
You swallowed hard, trying to find the words that wouldn't sound like a death sentence.
"He lives," you answered, the words feeling wrong on your tongue. "… he lives on the surface. He makes friends with humans. He lives in peace."
Sans' gaze sharpened, then silence.
"And me?" he asks. The words laced with hope.
"You go with your brother," you answered, your voice steadying despite everything you had gone through. "Living on the surface with him."
His face twisted, a grimace of disbelief followed by "I do?"
You nod.
"Even after this?" His voice cracked. "After the resets? Killin' you?"
He had said it like a joke that should have been there. Like there should have been a punchline to break the tension, a sarcastic grin to make it feel normal.
But there was no joke.
"You don't remember all of them," you replied, your gaze shifting away.
His eyelights burned a defiant scarlet. "I remember enough," he countered. The words were quiet, but they carried the weight of a mountain.
You looked at him. Truly looked at him. You saw the exhaustion carved into the very marrow of his bones. You saw the rage that has no place to go, a restless and starving. And beneath all that, all the violence, you saw the fear, a fear so old and so deep it had become a part of his very essence.
"You know…" You stopped yourself, swallowing before continuing. "Your soul kept telling yourself it was mercy,"
His body went still.
You saw the moment the realisation hit him. The moment he knew you hadn't just seen his attacks, but you had seen him.
Your voice shook, the truth spilling out of you, raw and bleeding.
"After you killed me, before I would reset, your soul would speak to me," you stared at his expression, knowing you were crossing a line you should not cross. "It kept saying, 'it didn't need to be this way.' That I could 'stay dead.' That it would be 'kinder.' 'Mercy.'
His grin returned. It was small. Ugly. Defensive meant to keep you at arm's length.
"Don't," he warned, the word desperate and raspy.
"It wasn't mercy. It was fear," you countered, refusing to flinch.
The bones behind him suddenly shattered, dissolving into a white dust that drifted through the golden light like falling snow. For one second, neither of you breathed. The world seemed to hold its breath with you.
Then his hands lunged forward, grabbing your wrists. He held you with frantic grounding strength hard enough to stop you from pulling away. Forcing you to stay.
His face was inches from yours, his breath was cold chill against your skin. His eyes were a storm of confusion and fury.
"You don't know shit about me," he growled.
"I know too much about you!" you snapped back, your voice ringing through the hall.
His grip tightened, but you didn't back down. You leaned in, driving the truth home like a blade.
"I know you're tired," you said, your voice relentless. "I know you're scared. I know you think if I reach the King, everything ends. I know you think humans don't change. I know you think killing me is the only thing left that makes sense!"
His eyelights flickered, the red glow wavering like a candle in the wind.
"And I know you don't want to do this," you continued. "To be working for the King. To be the one to do his dirty work so papyrus wouldn—"
Suddenly, he shoved you away.
The force of it sent you stumbling back, your heels skidding against the floor. For a terrifying second, you braced yourself, certain he was going to strike, like the "Judge" had decided you said too much and needed to die.
Instead, Sans just turned his skull away. He couldn't look at you anymore.
The silence of the hall returned, heavy and suffocating. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, stripped of everything.
"You should've stayed dead," he muttered.
"I know…"
His head snapped back toward you, his expression startled by your lack of defence. You reached up, wiping a stray tear away with the heel of your hand, trying to steady your breathing.
"I know! I know…" You cried, the frustration boiling over. After the first hundred deaths, I wanted to. After the next hundred, I begged myself to."
You paused, the breath catching in your throat as the sheer, repetitive horror of it all hit you again.
Sans said nothing. He just stood there, frozen, as the weight of your words settled into the silence between you.
"Do you have any idea what it's like?" you asked, your voice shaking, the weight of too many deaths, too many resets, too many impossible memories. "To look at someone you've known for years through stories and comics… someone you cared about before you even met them… and realise they're going to kill you?"
Sans stared at you. For one terrible second. Then his grin twitched.
Sharper. Ready to snap like a bear trap.
"Oh, that's the problem?" he rasped, his voice dropping in a low, dangerous growl. "You're havin' a hard time because the 'character' is actin' a little too real for your comfort, huh?"
He let out a short, dry sound, not a laugh, but a scoff that tasted like acid.
"Give me a break," he snapped, his red sockets flaring with a sudden, violent light. "You're standin' there actin' like you're the only one carryin' a burden. Like you're the only one who's lived hundreds of resets."
His grin strained at the corners, looking more unnatural.
"News flash, sweetheart: to me, you're just another human with a loud fuckin' mouth and a god complex. You think you know me? You don' know a god damn thing!"
You flinch despite yourself, not wanting to.
He saw it. Of course, he saw it. But the moment passed. His face hardened into a mask of stone.
"And now what?" he demanded, his voice low and edged. "I'm supposed to feel bad because you decided I was some… puppet you built in your head? And you think that gives you the right to think you fucking know me?"
Your mouth opened, but the air felt too thin to respond.
The silence between you wasn't just an absence of sound; it was a chasm.
Because he was right. God, he was so right. You don't know him. Not this version. You had known a story online, written by ordinary people, humans. A collection of lines and pixels on a glowing screen.
You had known fragments, and you had mistaken them for a soul.
And somehow, stupidly, painfully, that had been enough to make your heart feel like it was being crushed underfoot.
"No," you said at last. Your voice sounded raw, from screaming, from crying. "You're right… I don't know you."
Something in his expression flickered a momentary lapse in this armour. He had clearly expected a fight, a defence, a desperate attempt to prove him wrong. But you didn't. You let the truth land, heavy like a stone.
"I realise that now," you continued, the words trembling as they left your lips. "I know you aren't the version I made up."
His grin faltered to something unreadable, something almost wounded.
"But that doesn't matter," you whispered, your voice breaking as the first wave of grief hit you. "It doesn't erase everything we went through today. Good or bad… and it sure as hell doesn't make it hurt any less when you looked me in the face and tortured me."
Sans said nothing, as usual by now. He just stood there, his red eyelights burning in the dim light, looking less like a judge and more like a monster of a world he had just helped destroy.
You stepped back this time, creating a distance that felt more permanent than the physical distance between you. Your hands were trembling, a frantic motion of fading adrenaline you were too exhausted to hide anymore.
"Maybe I don't know the you standing in front of me," the words barely carried through the air. "But I cared anyway. Even after the first death."
His face tightened. It wasn't guilt. Guilt was a soft emotion, and Sans wasn't built for soft. But something had landed. Something hard and ugly wedged itself deep beneath his ribs, a splinter of truth that his anger couldn't quite push away.
His gloved fingers tapped a restless, impatient rhythm against his sides, as if trying to drum the feeling away.
"Why?" he asked.
The word was rough, almost bitten off, as if the act of asking it had physically hurt him.
Sans looked furious that he had even asked. He looked like he wanted to punch the wall, or you. He was furious that he was standing there, waiting, as if he actually gave a damn about the answer.
"Why the hell would you care about someone who wasn' real?" he snapped. It wasn't a question but a suspicious and sharp accusation, as if your affection was just another layer of a con, another trick he hadn't outsmarted yet.
"Because you mattered to me," you said, your voice steady despite the ache in your chest. "Because you all mattered to me."
Sans looked at you like he hated that answer. He looked at you like he wanted to rip it apart, to tear the sentimentality out of the words until there was nothing but cold, hard facts.
It was as if some part of him was absolutely terrified that you might not be crazy but actually be telling the truth. An impossible truth.
"You're REALLY tellin' me," he said, his voice low and deliberate, each word a heavy brick dropped into a still pool, "that where YOU come from, we're all just… nothing…?"
You flinched. He saw it.
His grin returned to that jagged, familiar edge, but there was no victory in it.
"Stories… games… comics," he sneered, his eyelight flashing a harsh, defensive glow. "Cute little tragedies you get to read over… and put them down when you're bored."
"That's not…" You had started, the protest rising in your throat.
"It is, isn' it?" he cut you off, his voice rising.
You had nothing.
The silence that followed was deafening. What could you even say to that? How could you argue with the truth of his existence? How could you tell him he was wrong? Or worse… how could you tell him he was right? How could you? That you had cried over him? That you had cried for the monster in front of you, real and terrifying, with your blood on his hands, and the unshakeable pain in his eyes?
His voice dropped, becoming low and hollow. "And now you're here."
You nodded, avoiding his gaze.
"Not as a 'reader' this time," he muttered. "But as the player. Crying and breaking."
You nodded again.
"Dying," he added. "Dying in the dirt because you stepped into the frame."
You did nothing. Swallowing hard, tasting the metallic of your blood.
His eyelight trembled, the red glow flickering erratically.
Then, he laughed. It wasn't his usual cocky chuckle. It was the one short, empty sound.
"Heh."
"That's a sick joke," he said. "A real, twisted, fuckin' joke."
"Sans…"
"No!" His voice cracked like a whip, cutting through the air. "No, you don't get to say my name like that."
You froze.
His hands curled into fists at his sides, his knuckles tight.
"You don't get to come in here," he snarled, his voice rising, "tell me my whole damn life is just a fucking story, tell me you know me, tell me you care for me, and then look at me like I'm supposed to believe this? Like I'm supposed to know what to do with that!"
His breathing was uneven. Monsters didn't need to breathe the way humans did; it wasn't a biological necessity for them, but he was gasping, his chest heaving as if he were drowning in the very air of the hall.
"You think that makes it better?" he demanded, stepping forward, his hands moving angrily with each word. "You think knowing the ending fixes this?"
You whispered a soft, hurting, "No."
"Then tell me what the fuck you want from me?!"
The question echoed, bouncing off the cold walls.
You stared at him, the silence stretching between you. Seven hundred deaths. Seven hundred resets. Seven hundred reasons to hate him. Seven hundred reasons to simply lie down and let the darkness take you, like he had wanted you to do.
But underneath all of them, somehow, impossibly, there was still the same answer.
"I want you to let me pass."
Sans closed his sockets.
"And if you're wrong?" he asked, his voice tired.
"I'm not," you replied, though your heart hammered against your chest.
"If you are." His sockets opened. The bright crimson had dimmed from his eyelights.
"If I let you pass," he said, stepping into your personal space, his presence suddenly overwhelming, "and humans kill us all anyway? If your 'hope' is just another lie?"
"It won't…"
"Answer," he demanded, the sudden volume making you jump.
Your voice softened, losing its edge as you looked him in the eye.
"Then I'll reset."
Sans' face went blank. His expression smoothed out into terrifying neutrality.
You realised too late what you had said. You had meant it as a promise, a way to say that you would fix it, that you would try again until it was right. But to him, it was a reminder of his own helplessness.
Unblinking, he smiled. It was a slow, creeping movement. It was a terrible, Cheshire cat smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"There it is," he whispered.
Your stomach dropped, a cold pit of dread forming in your gut.
"Wait!"
"That's your fuckin' problem right there, sweetheart."
He lifted one hand. A single bone formed beside him, shimmering with a dull, menacing red light. A silent reminder of what he is capable of. A reminder of his duty.
The Royal executioner.
"You still think the resets fix everything," he said, devoid of emotion.
"N-no!" you said quickly, the words tumbling out as you tried to bridge the widening gap. "No, I don't. Not after this. Not after everything."
"But you'd use it," he countered, his gaze unwavering.
"If I had to…," you admitted, the truth tasting like ash.
"And how many times?" he asked, stepping closer, the bone humming with low, vibrating magic. "How many tries before people stop being people to you? How many times before they just become… things? Toys to play with?"
His voice turned quiet, dropping to a level so low it felt like he was whispering directly into your soul. "How many times before I'm just a line you've already read?"
The words hit you like a physical slap, leaving your cheeks stinging and your heart reeling.
Sans watched the damage land. For a fleeting second, his face shifted. A flicker of regret crossed his features.
"I don't want to reset anymore," you said, your voice more steady now.
His expression hardened instantly. "Every human says that."
"I'm not every human," you snapped.
"No," he said, his eyes narrowing, his voice dropping to a cold edge.
"You're worse."
You went still, the air freezing in your lungs.
The second the words left his mouth, his face changed. It was a subtle fracture, a look of sudden, sharp realisation. It was as if he hadn't meant to say it, or as if he had intended to hurt you and was suddenly horrified by how easily he had succeeded.
But he did not take it back.
Of course, he didn't. Underfell does not take back knives after throwing them.
You nodded once.
"I am," you whispered, finally accepting the truth.
You weren't just a player in a story you had no right stepping foot in; you were becoming a force of nature, a god playing a girl.
His hand lowered, the single bone beside him dissolving into red mist.
You looked past him, toward the end of the hall. You looked toward the King, toward the surface, toward the ending you had been chasing all day like a desperate prayer as if reaching the end could somehow send you home before the story swallowed you whole.
Then, you looked back at Sans.
"I won't stop," you said. It wasn't a boast. It was a fact. "I will get past you."
You expected another attack. You braced yourself for it, muscles tensing, soul readying for the impact. You waited for the bones, the blasters that turned you to dust, for the red magic to slam into your chest, for the agonising pain of your soul being crushed, for then to be at the beginning of the doors before the Judgement Hall.
His hand shook before shoving it into his pocket, hiding the chaos of emotions swirling inside him.
"Get out of my sight," he said, flat and empty.
"Huh?" Your breath caught in your throat.
"You heard me," he muttered, turning his gaze away, refusing to meet yours.
You stared at him, frozen, your mind racing to catch up with the reality of the moment. He was the judge. He was the executioner. And he was stepping aside.
"Don't fucking make me repeat myself," he snapped, but the bite was missing from his tone. It was just a reflex, a habit of a monster used to being cruel.
"Go on," he muttered, his eyes fixed on a random point on the floor. "Before I change my mind."
You took one step. Then another. Your legs felt heavy, like they were made of lead, threatening to buckle beneath you with every inch of progress.
When you finally passed him, you stopped.
You should've kept walking. The king was waiting, the surface was calling, and the story was demanding you move forward. But you stopped anyway.
"Sans…"
His skull tilted slightly. Not a full turn, it wasn't enough to see you, but it was a small acknowledgement. A tiny crack in the wall.
"I'm sorry," you mumbled.
His shoulders tensed, his entire frame turning rigid under his clothes.
You didn't even know what you were apologising for. You couldn't narrow it down. You were apologising for lying. For knowing the secrets of his soul he didn't want exposed. For ruining his world. For being a human with a loud mouth and a god complex.
You were apologising for making him in your head before he ever had a choice. For not being the Frisk the story expected. For not staying dead when the resets demanded it.
You were apologising for everything.
For ever existing.
Sans said nothing for so long that you thought he would ignore you, letting the silence swallow your apology whole.
Which is something you deserved. You didn't deserve his forgiveness after everything you had said and done.
But then, something so quiet you almost imagined it, he spoke.
"Yeah," then a long pause. "Me too."
You looked back, and he was gone.
There was only the vast emptiness of the hall. The only thing remaining was the pale, golden light filtering through the high windows, casting long, indifferent shadows across the floor.
So you walked.
Your footsteps echoed too loudly against the stone, a lonely sound that reminded you just how much space you were taking up in the world that felt increasingly fragile.
It reminded you just how much you fucking screwed up.
And for the first time since the killing began, you felt like you were the true monster under the bed.