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The thing about trying everything you can think of is that some of those things are, objectively, extraordinarily fucked up.
One cold winter morning, Sans writes in his notes:
hey, me: don’t let the anomaly capture you. ever. kill yourself if that’s the only way to avoid it. if you’re questioning this advice at any point, check the entries from last timeline and you’ll understand.
What prompts this is one of many incidents that make Sans very glad his memories from other timelines are never more detailed than deja vu and nightmares that he forgets upon waking up.
It goes like this:
Sans wakes up at the start of a new timeline. He checks his notes. They say the anomaly’s been getting restless lately. Going on a spree of doing the worst things it can think of. He prepares for an unpleasant ride.
For a few days, there’s nothing remarkable. It’s quiet. His brother talks about a new friend, but that’s not unusual enough to inspire more than a feeling of discomfort and unease.
Sans doesn’t get involved. He stays away from the anomaly unless he’s performing judgement, generally. It’s not worth dealing with unless the timeline becomes so bad that it’s better to end it early than let it stand.
He interfered more back in the early timelines, but these days the hopelessness is so ubiquitous it transcends the boundaries of time. He starts most runs already depressed. It only gets worse as the resets stack up.
Sometimes he has good days, but not often. He thinks they’re getting rarer. He thinks one day he might stop having any at all.
That day is not a good day. That day, about a week into the run, is the day the anomaly enacts its plan.
He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop. He actively avoids the practice, when he can get away with it. There’s a point where it doesn’t matter what he knows, and ignorance is, if not bliss, at the very least usually an absence of active emotional torment.
But by sheer chance, he happens to be nearby when it goes down, because he falls asleep in odd places sometimes and on this particular occasion he fell asleep in a tree and he’s woken up to an atrocity.
He can’t see what’s happening. He’s not facing the right way and shifting right now would come with a risk of discovery he’s not willing to take. The sounds are pretty good at illustrating, though.
“FLOWEY, PLEASE STOP.” His brother is saying. “YOU’RE HURTING ME.”
This is accompanied by the sound of vines sliding over bone. He wonders if Flowey is crushing his brother to death. He wonders if he’s going to have to sit back and not interfere while that happens.
Flowey says, “No, I don’t think I will! I’m having far too much fun to just end it.”
There’s a sense of thrill to the anomaly’s words. Like he’s just stumbled upon a new and interesting possibility.
Sans decides that if he stays in this tree any longer he’s going to do something inadvisable. He takes a shortcut to Grillby’s, and ignores the slimy feeling that comes with leaving Papyrus to his fate.
If he allows Papyrus to be the lever that works against him, the anomaly will never stop using it. He cannot afford to put the well-being of this timeline’s Papyrus over the well-being of the infinite other iterations of him.
No matter how much he wants to.
Grillby hands him a bottle of ketchup. He says, “put it on my tab?” And leaves without waiting for an answer.
He drinks it slowly, with precise, robotic motions and refuses to think about anything but the flavor, the texture, the smell. Refuses to let his mind wander down snow covered paths towards secluded forest clearings because he really truly cannot afford to interfere.
Later, he waits in Judgement Hall. There are enough people dead that he’s definitely ending the anomaly this time, even aside whatever mysterious cruelty has been committed against his brother.
He hears footsteps. There shouldn’t be anyone here.
Unexpected things are never good, when the anomaly is involved. He braces himself for something he’ll dislike.
Papyrus walks in. Actually, he shuffles in. His gait is stiff, awkward in a way he never is. His face is blank with a kind of horrified exhaustion. Every inch of his body is covered in vines.
At some point, Sans forgot how to grieve. For all he doesn’t consciously remember, after enough timelines watching everyone he’s ever cared about be slaughtered, he just… stopped being able to make himself care.
You can get used to anything.
So it’s remarkable, especially to him, the sheer intensity of the anger he feels when he realizes what has happened.
Flowey has found a way to operate his brother like a puppet. Flowey has killed a significant portion of the underground using his brother as a weapon. Flowey has done this, and forced Papyrus to watch.
Sans thinks, to himself, oh. he’s going to die today.
because i’m going to kill him.
Papyrus says, in a dead and awful voice he never wants to hear again, “OH. HELLO, BROTHER.” Smiles at Sans. “COULD YOU HELP ME?”
He’s not asking Sans to save him.
The thing about Papyrus is Sans doesn’t actually know how much he knows. He’s never asked, and it doesn’t really come up.
But one thing Papyrus definitely knows about is Sans’ job, and what Papyrus probably knows is who the anomaly is and what Sans does to him, normally, in this room.
Flowey, who doesn’t know his brother quite as well as Sans does, laughs. “As if he could!” His head covers one of Papyrus’ eyes. He’s smiling. “I wonder what you’ll do when I use your own brother to kill you?”
The second sentence is addressed to Sans. It really shouldn’t be.
“so that’s your plan.” He says, voice even.
Flowey nods. “Yup! Personally, I think it’s pretty inspired! I make him attack you over and over again, you dodge, you try to hit back but can’t because you don’t want to hurt your beloved brother,” The last two words are said with a venom befitting the conclusions previous Sanses have drawn about Flowey’s true identity. “And eventually, you’ll get tired, and you’ll die, and I’ll give your brother a few minutes to cry over your dust before I move on to Asgore!”
He sounds so fucking proud of himself. Skeletons don’t have digestive systems, but Sans still wants to vomit.
He says, “right.” And, “you’re making some key assumptions there, bud.”
Papyrus hasn’t said anything, beyond that first request. Actually, Sans thinks he might be asleep.
It’s an awful trust that his brother is placing in him, but there’s some comfort in the absoluteness of it. Some relief in knowing that Papyrus trusts him enough to bow out of the situation entirely and let Sans handle it.
At least he won’t have to remember this. At least neither of them will, beyond a few pages of notes that could never fully convey the feeling of knowing Sans will have to kill him in order to make sure this never happens again.
Because if he allows Papyrus to be the lever that works against him, Flowey will pull on that every single time Sans has something he wants.
The choice is thus: He can stand aside here and now, and this Papyrus might even live to the end of the timeline, and Flowey will do this over and over… Or he can draw the same line in the sand he always does, and be vicious enough about it that this won’t be tried again.
He closes his eyes. He says, “it’s a beautiful day outside.”
And in the next timeline, he reviews his notes and provides a warning, and wishes he knew how to protect anyone other than himself.