brother show me cassiopeia

by invalidinthewilds

Summary:

No matter what timeline he’s in, Sans unwillingly records all in his scientific journal.

(...most of what he records is not very scientific...)

Notes:

If you will forgive a bit of an anecdote, I recently replayed Undertale after having gone several years without and it brought back all the nostalgic feels I have for this game. I still cannot believe it will be a decade this year since Undertale was first released! One of the first fanfics I ever tried my hand at was in this fandom and, well, it inspired me to write something in connection with it, something that hopefully shows my love for this game and showcases how much I’ve grown as a writer in the exactly nine years since I first posted the last one. I hope you will enjoy! :D

Please note: just as with the previous fic in this series, a chapter ending denotes a reset.

Brief content warning for this chapter: references to the aftermath of a character’s (likely canonical) suicide.

Chapter 1: first timeline

entry 1

papyrus is a bad influence, which is evident if i’m writing in this thing. he’s always going on about how “SOOTHING” and “WHATEVER THE OPPOSITE OF SOOTHING THAT ALSO FEELS GREAT” writing in his journal is. well, i personally don’t need either of those things, but i suppose i should pick this up again. something happened earlier today that was kind of interesting, in a theoretical science way, and this journal has unique properties that make it useful for these more likely than you think events.

anyway, it all started earlier today when i was helping papyrus find a box for his sentry station, which i will have stated for the record was both difficult and arduous. actually, i just asked grillby for one. but i did lug it out there (teleporting can technically be described as “lugging”) and i did personally set it up for my brother (papyrus was too busy ensuring that no humans had appeared in our 2.5 second absence). it was all worth it though when i kept dumping snow on top of the soggy box to make it blend in with the scenery and then drawing crossbones on top of that to make sure any humans that happened to drop in would know that this is a very scary skeleton sentry on duty. i think i got the message across. though papyrus’s beautifully affixed note also helped with that.

and it was right after i finished that everything started to feel a little strange. no i’m not describing “strange” again. i just know it means there’s another anomaly on the loose.

it has to be a human. look, just spitballing here, but it would be nice if the universe could at least give me some advanced warning on this. think of the possibilities. i could calibrate all my puns, tease papyrus with a really good puzzle, do ~something~ in snowdin, and everyone would remember it forever.

but, as previously established in here, the universe hates me, so i guess i’ll just stay in this timeline where i did absolutely nothing in snowdin, used old material on papyrus, and the only thing i’ve recalibrated recently is my ass.

such is the way of the universe and lazy skeletons.

(oh, and on a personal note, if i or anyone else gets confused as to why i labelled the middle of the book as the first entry—yeah, i’m not looking back over all the previous entries to find out which one this actually is. get lost. especially you, future sans.)

 

entry 2

i have a friend i hear sometimes. i know how this sounds, just go with it. well, my brief actual work of lugging boxes and recording timelines had me beat so i decided to speak with her. this was less relaxing than i imagined. instead of puns she started asking if, hypothetically, i could watch over a human that one day, just possibly, centuries from now, might make their way into snowdin.

i thought about it. i like this lady a lot who appreciates puns like a fine wine. i said yes.

haha W H Y  T H E  F U C K  D I D  I  S A Y  Y E S

anyway. it’s good. it’s all good. this just means i can keep a real eyesocket on the anomaly without looking more suspicious than i usually do. plus, a captive audience is exactly what i need to get the comedian creativity flowing again. really, this whole thing is just great.

well, at least papyrus will be excited to see a human. his first one. or so he thinks.

 

entry 3

i played it perfectly. papyrus was confounded until the last minute. the human seemed pretty enchanted with him too. as they should be.

I’ve been watching the anomaly carefully since their arrival in Snowdin. They seem curious and intelligent, but impulsive and, at times, violent. They’ve already killed several monsters, including Dogamy and Dogaressa. They don’t exhibit any of the fear you’d expect from a child human who’s just fallen down and discovered a world they never knew existed, just frustration when their health is low in battle. This makes me think that my hypothesis is right.

at least papyrus seems pleased with the human, but he also keeps telling me how he wants to capture them and bring them to undyne. i keep suggesting that maybe he can capture the next human that falls into the underground. he keeps replying that this is typical of my lazy nature. which is probably true.

papyrus will likely be fine. the human seems to like him. they laugh at all his antics and seem sad when he discusses his limited number of friends. he’s reasonably easy to fight and more merciful than he knows.

the anomaly won’t get frustrated with him.

 

entry 4

papyrus is safe, and the human even came back to the house for some “date” with papyrus. which probably went as well as papyrus’s previous “date” with my “pet” “rock”. i mostly stayed out of it except to play my trombone at comedically opportune moments. i’ve got my own haunts i’ll take the kid to if they’re interested.

somehow i get the feeling i’m going to have to work at being lazy today.

 

entry 5

undyne’s dead. this is probably not surprising. when a fish lady with a hero complex meets a human child with an ability to jump timelines and a frustration at merely trying to escape two loveable dogs, someone’s going to have a bad time. that’s a scientific fact.

Still, Undyne didn’t deserve that. And I’ve seen how upset Papyrus is when she’s dead.

papyrus doesn’t need to know everything.

 

entry 6

the anomaly’s gone. apparently just passed through the barrier and vanished. thanks, kid. you were a fine contributing member to monster society while you were here. for example, you assisted with population control.

well, anyway, pretty much everyone important is dead. asgore’s dead, undyne’s dead, most of the royal guard’s dead. the situation was more dire than even i realized because i came home yesterday to papyrus listening to an offer from some unknown entity to rule the underground and he agreed before i could snatch the phone out of his skeletal hands.

which is fine. i’m fine with this. papyrus seems really excited to move back to new home and help all monsterkind, and if that’s what he wants to do then i’ll try to help.

we leave tomorrow. i’ve done zero packing and plan to stay that way. being lazy as royalty is more socially acceptable, even applaudable, than when you’re a snowdin pleb, but papyrus doesn’t agree with this assessment.

only thing that’s been kind of bothering me is that my usual voice in the door to the ruins hasn’t appeared for the past few days. i sort of wanted to explain to her why she might not hear from me for a while, but the only thing i hear when i knock is my own fist.

I hope

i’m sure she’s fine. probably just busy baking again.

 

entry 7

welp, as i suspected, this position has been largely thankless. hating the powers that be is always more enjoyable than being the powers that be. and that’s with pretending this timeline will still exist in the next few days. which, you know, it won’t.

maybe that’s for the best. after all the havoc the anomaly created, everyone in the underground seems even more desperate than usual. there’s a lot less gritting our teeth these days and a lot more openly brawling in the streets. and a lot more dust. alphys is trying to help me come up with a plan to keep the monster populace happy, or at least marginally less violent. so far we haven’t come up with anything great.

i couldn’t do this. i decided to check on papyrus. he was scheduled to visit the orphanage today that’s recently been built to accommodate all the monster youngsters who lost their parents during the human’s rampage. which sort of concerned me for obvious reasons.

Instead, I found Papyrus sitting on the floor, all the kids gathered around him, and my brother stirring a big pot that he kept saying would become, “THE UNDERGROUND’S FINEST SPAGHETTI”. I question this at least a little when most of the noodles were on the floor, but I suppose that’s just a matter of taste. All the kids were laughing and asking Papyrus questions about what it was like to be king. Papyrus answered every single one with “DEEPLY EXHAUSTING” and “MY BROTHER COULD TELL YOU MORE ABOUT THAT”.

I stood there in the doorway, just watching him, and I thought about how amazing my brother is, how even after all this time, through all these memories that he doesn’t even have anymore, he continues to surprise me.

He’s a far better ruler than I ever would be. I told him that as were walking back to the castle with all the spaghetti that I would “accidentally” get rid of while he was asleep. He said that was probably true. And then he said I was probably the best king’s assistant ever, though.

Today was a pretty good day.

 

Entry 8

I probably should have seen this coming. Alphys is dead.

I went into her lab this morning and found her dust scattered around a rambling letter she’d addressed to me. It talked about Undyne and Mettaton and her deep guilt over her experiments and how she’d only weigh me down in the days to come.

She was getting erratic before this. The Lab was even messier than usual. She was always talking about Undyne. I really should have seen this coming.

Maybe I did, and I just didn’t care enough.

I told Papyrus that she’s on vacation with Undyne and Asgore. Then I went back and fed all the Amalgamates. I’ll probably just leave them where they are. I really don’t want to deal with the fallout of everyone finding out about them again. And Alphys deserves a better legacy than that.

I guess this means that I also have full access to the Lab again, but I already know there’s nothing useful in there anymore.

 

entry 9

papyrus and i have been working hard ruling the underground lately. very hard. this is real, stop questioning this. anyway, i decided that i deserved a day of being lazy again. so today we went back to snowdin. still lots of snow. imagine the horror otherwise.

papyrus was amazing and instantly built another true to life snow papyrus. i just did nothing. which was also nice.

i have officially decided that i hate this timeline. i left a message for the human on their phone about how much life sucks since they killed everyone.

hopefully they can take the hint.

Chapter 2: second timeline

entry 10

so the human can take hints. that’s useful information for the future.

it’s been nice to wake up in my own bed in snowdin and hear papyrus puttering about downstairs. or wake up on my bare stained mattress and hear papyrus yell at me to stop being so lazy. same thing.

papyrus and i had a pretty good day goofing off, annoying the snowdin townsfolk and the like, before papyrus did a reconnaissance search under the holiday tree to ensure the present he has under there was secure. seriously, “inventing” christmas is one of the better ideas i’ve had in this hellhole.

later, when i was supposed to be on duty, i went back to the door in the ruins and knocked. it felt good to hear my familiar voice answer back, “Hello. For some reason, it feels as if we have not spoken in a while.”

very true. she’s quite clever, my little voice in a door.

and also persistent. she asked me again to make her a promise.

And after promising her in one universe, it’s not as if I can well refuse her in another.

 

entry 11

the human’s arrived. still seems frustrated this go around, but so far hasn’t hurt any monsters in my purview. almost as if they’ve learned their lesson.

but i know better than to believe that.

 

entry 12

papyrus came up to me a few minutes ago and blatantly asked if he could “borrow” a gaster blaster after i had just asked him if he could please maybe think about not fighting the human. i think this is his attempt at being sneaky. well, even in some hypothetical universe where i’m fine with him fighting time travelling humans filled to the brim with determination, i’m still not fine with him using a device that our father explicitly made for annihilation to the detriment of the user’s own vitality.

but of course i don’t say that. i say “yeah. sure. make a mess outside.” and then i plan a suitable diversion. i know a dog that can help with that.

i mean, i actually know a lot of dogs, but this one in particular happens to be useful.

 

entry 13

the anomaly continues to pretend to be cute and innocent. they haven’t even killed undyne this time around. actually papyrus managed to make undyne and the human friends through, and this is a direct quote: “BONES AND DECEIT”.

I’m so proud of him.

in other related news—and i’m still not entirely sure how this happened since nobody’s given me a direct explanation (i wonder where they learned that behaviour?)—but during this deceptive friendship hangout it seems that undyne’s house burned down, so she’s apparently living with papyrus and me for the foreseeable future. i only found this out because i slammed the front door (i always do this) and accidentally destroyed undyne’s hyper important recreation of waterfall in cards edition. whoopsie.

papyrus decided to make spaghetti to cheer her up, and it is a true statement that papyrus’s cooking can distract anybody for a solid length of time. distracting enough that i was able to swoop by grillby’s and grab some grub that undyne might actually like to eat.

and it’s a good thing i know shortcuts because by the time i returned, our house was about to become the overhyped commercialized sequel to undyne’s charred wreckage. you know, the more i think about it, undyne’s house burning down is not a mystery.

since the kitchen table houses my “pet” “rock”, and since we smashed up the matching chair set for no reason a long time ago, we all sat on the couch. nobody’s smashed up the remote yet, so papyrus was able to flip through the channels for some greasy grillby’s and burnt spaghetti ambience. sometimes he likes watching “my little boney” for reasons i do not understand, but today it was mettaton on tv and, whaddya know, it seems the human was right there with him. helping him cook? serving as the dish? it was a little unclear.

undyne and i were debating the ethics of cooking humans on live television when papyrus got a little jumpy and started to have a certain gleam in his eyesockets that i’ve come to know and fear. “I HAVE AN AMAZING IDEA! WE SHOULD GO TO ASGORE’S HOUSE!! WE COULD MEET HIM AND…I’M NOT REALLY SURE WHAT ELSE AFTER THAT, BUT IT WOULD BE SO FUN AND AMAZING AND NOT CONCERNING AT ALL. WE SHOULD ALL GO WHEN THIS IS OVER!!!”

undyne just said that sounded great. so when she went into the kitchen to make some sort of fries concoction, “But with CHEESE and GRAVY! No one has EVER tried this before!” i turned to papyrus and asked where this unusual burst of inspiration was coming from.

“OHHHH, DEFINITELY NOT FROM A FLOWER THAT LIKES TO TALK TO ME SOMETIMES.”

uh huh

i really don’t want to get involved if this has something to do with flowey.

on the other skeletal hand, flowey isn’t the anomaly anymore.

on the third mutant skeletal hand, flowey once tried to erase me from existence.

on the fourth very mutant skeletal hand, it might be kind of fun to see him and the human in mutual combat with each other.

welp, i gotta be in hotland anyway. might as well check it out if things get interesting.

 

entry 14

well, it seems the anomaly does have a few other talents besides killing people.

the underground’s actually going to go empty, just like everyone always deluded themselves it would. they all seem so happy.

i don’t feel anything at all.

 

entry 15

i don’t really see a point in writing in here anymore, but i suppose some of this information might be useful to remember later.

everyone’s splitting off. alphys is in japan now (the least shocking revelation ever), toriel’s opened a school in the uk, and undyne’s going to america to find her people.

papyrus has decided that we should move to calgary because, in his words, “IT IS SNOWDIN OF THE HUMAN WORLD. DO YOU THINK THEY’RE COPYING US?”. i told him nothing was more likely. he’s also excited that most of snowdin’s old residents (plus asgore) are moving to canada too. i’m not sure he realizes how big canada is yet. i guess that’s another thing papyrus and humans have in common.

so it’s great, right? everyone’s happy. everyone’s distracted. and calgary’s so far away that no one can focus on me with alarming intensity now that we’re out of that pit in the ground. aren’t you happy, sans? why didn’t we see you at the celebration last night, sans? you know, the more i think about it, sans, you seem like you’ve been unhappy for a really long time.

thanks, undyne. i guess i’ll just get a human therapist and explain to them how i’m trapped in an infinite timeloop. i’m sure that’ll help. just don’t pencil me in for an appointment next week. you know, usual infinite timeloop problems.

it doesn’t matter. i don’t have to worry about that anymore. papyrus is great because he never changes and he never asks concerningly pointed questions. so we’ll just annoy the hell out of calgary and enjoy this while it lasts.

 

entry 16

papyrus has decided to open up a restaurant. he’s not half bad at cooking, actually, when undyne isn’t teaching him. it’s just me, papyrus and a child monster assistant that also likes to say NYEH HEH HEH at our little establishment. not to brag, but we’re fucking legends.

mostly i’ve been helping out by doing coincidentally timed trombone playing, stand up comedy when the occasion calls for it (like when someone’s plate of food is on fire), and writing bone puns on the menus. everyone loves it, especially when papyrus stomps out of the kitchen to groan dramatically and beg the customers to please ignore “MY BONE-LOVING, PUN-LOVING, NON-LOVEABLE BROTHER”.

but, as much as i enjoy our newfound popularity, i have to admit our success isn’t because of papyrus’s cooking or even our little routine. it’s because we’re monsters. we’re the freakshow in town that every human wants to gawk at. but i suppose that’s better than the alternative, right? at least like this they find us funny.

well, laugh all you want, h u m a n s. my brother got a red hot convertible out of the deal and i got a tricycle. atheists. checkmate. something.

 

entry 17

the others are still far too interested in my personal life, so don’t think that they aren’t, but distance plus my little shortcuts means i can safely say hey every once and a while and leave when they start pulling up an armchair.

asgore’s probably the best for that. i just pop into vancouver where he’s doing his hippie, plant-based, vegan thing, and he doesn’t ask me where i’ve been and why i don’t pick up his phone calls and add in some long-winded spiel about blah blah therapy, he just gets me a cup of tea and mutters to his plants. though, admittedly, it is sort of awkward talking to him when i’m on better terms with his ex-wife than he is.

alphys and undyne are all right (by default, i’m always with both of them, even if they’re on separate continents, because they’re always video calling each other). but undyne is far too perceptive and i swear she’s an even worse influence on alphys. i miss the good old days when alphys and i would just flop on the floor in the lab and eat junk food and make science jokes out of swear words.

i suppose i don’t really need to visit toriel when we’re texting all the time, but i like to surprise her. it’s funny how she always behaves as if it’s the height of impoliteness that nothing’s ready for my visit, even though i’m a skeleton who arbitrarily decided to just wander in, and a skeleton that furthermore enjoys eating slop at all times and sleeps on a mattress in his brother’s basement.

but i like seeing her. when we’re together everything feels a little less unbearable. she’ll laugh at any joke i make, no matter how bad, especially if it’s bad. she’ll drink too many glasses of wine and end up giggling with me on the couch.

she’ll look at me at sunrise and that’s when i know i need to leave. before i do something i’ll regret.

 

entry 18

this is going to sound slightly more industrious than my usual activity, so bear with me, but it seems i’m going to a human university in the fall.

you see, i was just innocently taking one of my “shortcuts” home when a human saw me doing this and tried to kill me. and when i wouldn’t die, i got arrested. i ended up at a police station. which i suppose i could have technically “disappeared” from, but i’m a well-known local comedian. i have a reputation to uphold.

i decided to write a dissertation proving that teleportation is not only theoretically plausible, but physically occurring. i also wrote “gaster blasters: the cool, the bad, and the life-sucking”. after that they released me, probably because they wanted me to stop writing essays.

well, it turns out papyrus got a little nervous when it had been an entire day and i still hadn’t come home. he ended up calling every single monster he knew. unfortunately, since coming to the surface, he knows every single monster. and after all calling each other, they decided to complain to every single human they knew.

this is how i ended up on human news, and becoming some sort of icon of monster oppression, and now a bunch of political panels composed entirely of humans are endlessly debating whether monsters should have rights, and i just wanted to get a burger before going home okay. this is way too much for one skeleton who does not give a fuck.

anyway, as a gesture of goodwill, a canadian university offered me a slot for studying quantum physics in the fall. asgore immediately phoned me up and pressed me heavily to agree since this would help ease human-monster relations. i forgot how persuasive this guy can be. i said yes. FUCK.

welp, it’s all good. when you think about it. really. i’ve got nothing better to do, after all. and i can take shortcuts on the weekends to papyrus (hopefully with less murder this time around).

and i suppose working in the sciences again could be vaguely interesting.

Toriel sure thinks so. she keeps texting me how proud she is, followed by (very incorrect) blocks of info on vancouver.

look, i know this is gonna sound weird, especially when this whole incident is gonna put me closer to her ex-husband—from a geographic standpoint—than to her, but i keep wondering if she had something to do with setting this offer into motion. she’s sneakier than she looks.

i love that about her.

 

entry 19

the completely arbitrary jury in my head on previous deceiving toriel actions is still out (and might be forever), but i can now confirm with certainty at least some of her sneak.

so, a few days ago, while i was helping papyrus close up his restaurant, toriel and alphys and undyne appeared out of nowhere (this coming from a guy who can teleport) and asked for a table. i said fuck yeah and papyrus never refuses any request ever, so we moved a few tables together before papyrus rushed off to make his “CALGARY AND ADJACENT CALGARY SUBURBS FAMOUS” spaghetti.

i reassured them once he was gone that it would actually be edible.

well, over plates of quite acceptable spaghetti, we got to talking, which led to more talking, which led to them inviting themselves over to our house. and how could i say no to that?

undyne spent most of her time going through every single room and saying things like, “I can’t BELIEVE you kept THIS FUC—FREAK—FRIG—um, I mean, completely normal rock.” meanwhile, alphys kept trying to show me a trailer for mew mew kissy cutie 3 which she had hopes would redeem the franchise, but for some reason she couldn’t get it to play on her phone (i don’t think i ever installed the wi-fi properly). this culminated in all of us holding a mew mew kissy cutie marathon until we fell asleep from the sheer excitement of watching mew mews being kissy cutie for 1,516 consecutive hours.

i woke up to the smell of toriel baking one of her glorious pies. i don’t know if you know this, but toriel’s pies are the kind of thing you go through hell to eat (speaking from experience here). i’m sure even the demonic mew mew 2 would agree with that.

over the pies of heaven, the others started asking me about what there is to see in calgary. absolutely nothing, but i mentioned that the kananaskis lakes have hella good views (or so a reddit poster told me once), and everyone suddenly decided that was what they wanted to do.

papyrus said he wouldn’t go because his precious restaurant would die without his loving hand guiding it (which, considering that there’s only three employees, one of which is a child without arms and the other being me, is probably true). but toriel was pretty insistent i come along.

you know me. i’ll agree to anything toriel says.

so we drove out there and scared some humans half to death and camped out by the shores. and when the sun set, the four of us watched as the real stars appeared.

undyne, the most speechless i’d ever seen her, murmured something about never imagining something so beautiful. but mostly she and alphys just made out with each other to circumvent their speechlessness.

toriel and i sat together. she started telling me old folklore that she knew on the stars.

I didn’t say anything. I looked up at the sky and pretended that this was the first time I’d ever seen real stars. As if I couldn’t trace each one by memory. As if my father hadn’t pointed out each pinprick of light and told me the names of every star, every constellation, every galaxy that he knew. My favourite memory. Back when life seemed limitless. See the jagged edge of Cassiopeia’s constellation, which marks some of the most luminous stars we will ever see. And that bright swatch of light forms galactic Andromeda, daughter of Cassiopeia. One day, four billion years from now, Andromeda will collide with us to form something that we can’t even imagine.

but don’t worry about that, cause we’ll all be dead and life on earth will surely have ceased to exist.

i’m real fun at parties.

well, once toriel was done with the stars, i got to talking about some things i wanted to say. toriel’s a really good listener, even if i don’t ever really say much. we just sat there out by the lake talking till the sun rose up.

yup. that’s all we did. don’t let alphys fool you. she’s played too many dating games with obvious endings. this was nothing except a really good time.

 

Entry 20

It’s been months now since we’ve left the Underground. I expected things to turn over quickly, like they did the first time around with this anomaly. Every day I wake up in our house in Calgary, and every day I’m confused—and maybe even a little disappointed.

Toriel keeps asking me when. Or why not. I think she’s figured out part of it. She just keeps saying that she’d rather we were together for a brief time than none at all.

I’ve done this before. Enough times that I promised myself I’d never do it again. Never get my hopes up again, never break them again, never end up with someone that tomorrow might not even recognize me, who I’ll have to pretend is a stranger that means absolutely nothing.

But I can say that, and I can make myself those promises, but still, even still, after all this time

I’ll talk to Papyrus. Not about this, obviously, but see what he thinks about me being gone for longer than usual with a certain someone more than usual. If he’s okay with it, maybe that will be my answer.

…I’m almost hoping he says yes.

Chapter 3: third timeline

Notes:

Content warning that this chapter contains an intense amount of self-loathing and the heavy implication that Sans has harmed other monsters.

entry 21

as usual, i’m a fucking idiot.

 

entry 22

it seems the anomaly is out for carnage this time. but one doesn’t erase a happy ending for anything less.

 

Entry 23

Papyrus is dead.

 

entry 24

i keep watching them. the human. the anomaly. trying to figure out its inner workings, what’s making it tick. watch it hum the melody it’s already sung twice around shyren. is it guilt that makes them show her kindness, or just the compulsion to see what will happen now that

 

Entry 25

In another life, when Toriel and I were underneath a sky full of stars, she told me why she’d made me make that promise. Two children already gone. Another, she thought, would surely kill her.

She didn’t have to tell me that. I didn’t make that promise on a whim. That day, every day I make her a promise, I hear the grief in her voice. I know what it means for her to ask me something like that. And that’s why I know I’ll never refuse.

It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know what this promise really entails. It doesn’t matter that she might already be gone in this timeline. That promise meant something to me.

I’ll let this human go.

 

entry 26

the anomaly’s gone.

 

entry 27

so it turns out that everyone important is dead except mettaton.

nobody does that on a whim. nobody thinks to themselves, “you know who’s easy to defeat and psychologically stable to lead the underground in the aftermath? how about the narcissistic robot who thinks killing a child for entertainment is a sound business practice.”

anyway, i’m working for him now.

you see, mettaton was threatening grillby for having an establishment that didn’t play mettaton content at all times, so i bravely stepped forward and promised to help mettaton in exchange for him sparing the loving citizens of snowdin town.

haha. just kidding.

i have no idea what happened to snowdin after i left, but there’s at least several new shrines dedicated to mettaton there and i think grillby’s is getting a name change.

working for mettaton is soul-crushing but necessary. without papyrus here to yell at me, i’d probably just end up doing something stupid otherwise.

no time to do anything stupid when you’re with mettaton. he ends up doing that all on his own.

 

entry 28

still working for mettaton. say what you will about his newfound totalitarian tendencies and brutal erasures of monster rights, he does have style. hotland’s now filled with dozens of slick neon buildings made with forced monster labour. i always feel like some thudding techno beat should be playing while i’m guarding mettaton from his adoring fans. actually, it usually is. thanks, napstablook.

working for mettaton is still necessary, but i want out of here as soon as possible. i keep calling the human so that we can get a restart on this timeloop, but all i get when i do is a busy signal.

kids these days.

 

entry 29

still still working for mettaton. it’s always the same. it’s always mettaton sitting there signing autographs at the club and me leering at anyone who gets too close that he doesn’t want to get too close. it’s always neon and it’s always flashy and it’s always shyren doing her weird tube dancing that i think is supposed to be sexy (though it seems like her manager is doing most of the work).

admittedly, i do look pretty cool during all of this, leaning against a wall and doing my leering. skeletons were born to leer. i don’t really have to do more than that. not anymore. the others know the rumours. of monsters that mettaton doesn’t like going missing after i have a “talk” with them.

maybe i’m tired of playing the hero. maybe i’m even tired of playing lazy. maybe just for once i want to do whatever i want without care for the consequences.

which is worse. because it means there’s something about this human, this anomaly, that’s also in me. that if i were in their shoes, i’d be doing the exact same things they’re doing right now.

i hate that thought. i hate returning to my tiny little apartment next to mettaton’s penthouse suite and thinking about how much i miss snowdin. i hold papyrus’s present and i try the human’s phone and i look out the window to this neon hell that mettaton’s created and it’s always that busy signal. fuck you.

i go to bed. i think about how if this timeline hadn’t been created i’d be going to university right now. and the worst part is that i’m upset about it. like, yeah, it turns out i am fucking stupid enough to get my hopes up again. great job, sans. great. fucking. job. you piece of shit.

but, you know, it’s fine. really. one of these days i’ll stop getting that damn busy signal, and then i can bring everyone back from the dead, and then we can start this up all over again.

fun.

Chapter 4: fourth timeline

entry 30

i lied. i’m not fine.

i went out back and tried working on the machine again. i know it’s broken. i know i’ve already tried everything. but i just keep thinking that if i look over the machine one more time, maybe something will stand out. something that will mean i don’t ever have the kind of dream i had last night.

but nothing works. the machine’s too broken or i’m too stupid to figure out how to fix it.

i can hear papyrus pacing outside right now. he keeps asking me if i’m hungry. he keeps asking if i want him to make me spaghetti, or we could go to undyne’s house if i want, or even grillby’s, even if he hates grillby’s, even if he thinks grillby’s is a hellhole of grease and filth, or anything i want, anything i want, as long as i come out of here and please, please, please talk to him already.

heh. how funny. i’ve been waiting months to see my brother again, and now that i’m finally here, i can’t even make myself get up to talk to him. i can’t seem to do anything except sit here.

i wish everything was different.

 

entry 31

you know, this isn’t what i meant. but i suppose it’s what i deserve for complaining.

so, against the odds, everything’s gotten significantly worse since my last entry.

the anomaly’s decided to start killing everyone. and by ‘everyone’, i mean that i can hear them right now cheerfully calling out for monsters that they’re going to slaughter the moment they appear. everyone’s terrified. and that’s not even getting into the fact that i might know a little something they don’t. that this might be the end of the observable universe as we know it.

papyrus doesn’t like listening to me, but this time i really have to try.

 

Entry 32

Papyrus is dead.

 

Entry 33

Dad and I once had a conversation about the theoretics of goodness correlated to power. What would happen if a being had the omnipotence of a deity paired with the capriciousness of a child?

People don’t like to think like that. People like happy endings. People like religions that tell them that any possible all-powerful being will always be good and kind and pure.

There’s no story about a god that succeeds in destroying the entire world.

But maybe even this isn’t the right question. Here’s another truth that people don’t like thinking about: Anyone can become cruel with power. Because when everything can be erased and remade infinitely, shaped into whatever form you wish, what’s to stop you from pushing that to the limit?

But everyone has limits. Even gods. You fuck with the universe enough, and the universe fucks you right back. Look at what happened to me.

Look at what happened to my father.

…I’m probably the only one who remembers Dad existed anymore. And even my memory’s starting to fade. Something kind of odd I noticed in one of my earlier entries in here, about Dad being the one who showed me the stars—I don’t remember that. I remember looking up at the night sky as a kid, and I remember naming a lot of stars from memory, but I don’t remember him being there.

One day, one reset too many, and I’ll forget him like all the others. And then there will be nothing left to mark that he ever existed, except this book.

Or, well, you know. If the universe doesn’t end by then. Gotta put these things into perspective.

Thinking about Dad messes me up a bit, but I can’t help it. I keep wondering what he’d think about this. This was our worst-case scenario, what we hoped would never happen, yet always feared would. I wish he was here. He was less than perfect near the end, but he always knew better than me what to do. He’d have a better plan than hiding out in a shack in Snowdin.

The town’s quiet now. About an hour ago, Alphys came out here to bring the remaining survivors to safety. And then she knocked on my door and asked me to come with her.

I told her no.

She got upset. Flustered Alphys tearing at her lab coat. She’s too smart not to know what I planned to do instead. “You-you’re going to fight them, aren’t you? Even though…even though you know you’ll just die.”

I told her that was true. I also told her it was more complicated.

“You…Sans, you can’t leave me. You-you-you can’t. Not with Undyne…Undyne…I can’t do this alone. I…I can’t.”

There was nothing good I could say to that. Nothing that would justify me abandoning her in her hour of need. Not unless I told her the whole story. And I wasn’t telling her the whole story. For a lot of reasons. For every reason.

I told her she’d be fine. A lazy guy like me would only slow her down.

She got mad. And livid Alphys is never something you want to experience firsthand. “You know what, Sans? Fine. You want to throw your life away? Fine. Fight the human. And when you do, you think on all the people still here in Snowdin, who tried to do the exact same futile thing you’re contemplating doing now. And you think on how they’re all now dust.”

She stomped away. I watched her go, watched her huddle the Snowdin survivors onto her river contraption and direct them to safety. I know she can’t see it, but she is so much stronger than she knows. If there’s anything after this, she’ll be the one to help the Underground survive.

But I can’t stand back and do nothing anymore. And it’s not as if I didn’t think about taking Alphys up on her offer. Cause I did. I thought about it. I thought about every single time I’ve done something to help the others. Every single time I played the hero. Every single time I rallied the Underground together to survive. Every single time I was the last bastion to stop some threat that seemed like it would consume us all.

And what did that accomplish? Who remembers any of that?

But this time is different. If the anomaly succeeds, then Andromeda will collide with our galaxy and nothing will ever matter again.

I know what I have to do. And it’s not here in Snowdin. I have to break Toriel’s promise. I have to leave Alphys behind.

I care too much for the first time in a long time about what happens next.

I am going to stop the anomaly.

Chapter 5: fifth timeline

Notes:

Content warning that another suicide is discussed in this chapter. It's not canon and it's aftermath and motivations are described in significantly more detail than the last one.

entry 34

god

 

entry 35

papyrus and i got into a fight yesterday about something stupid that wasn’t really about him. it was about me.

so i left. i know this nice spot in waterfall that not too many other monsters know about. i sat there for a long time and tried not to think about the fate of the entire universe.

then i went to the lab. alphys lets me hang there whenever i want, and it was nice to see her back to her usual nervous, reclusive self—and one that wasn’t angry with me sacrificing myself for the underground to boot. endogeny bounded over to me the moment i went downstairs (i think they know i bring the dog treats) and i spent some time refining my petting techniques.

i’d like to say all of this helped. but it didn’t.

i returned to snowdin. i went to grillby’s. everyone asked me where i’d been all day. i said i’d been busy. they laughed.

grillby asked if i wanted something to eat. i said the usual. he went into the back. and i reached underneath the counter to where i know he keeps the good stuff.

this is where my memory gets a little hazy.

next thing i know i’m waking up on the couch early this morning instead of my bed and my hands are burning like i’ve been using magic. papyrus, who’d been sleeping on the floor and snoring loudly beside me, suddenly bounces up and says, “SANS!!! THANK GOODNESS YOU’RE…I MEAN UHHHH YOU WERE SLEEPWALKING!! AND I BRAVELY CORRALLED YOU ONTO THE COUCH! THAT’S, UH, ALL THAT HAPPENED.”

especially convincing when my last memory was drinking myself to oblivion at grillby’s. but i thanked him for "corralling” me (i didn’t even know he knew that word) and said i hoped i hadn’t been too much trouble (which was the truth).

“THAT’S OKAY, SANS. I DON’T MIND TAKING CARE OF YOU EVEN WHEN YOU ARE TROUBLE.”

i really don’t deserve papyrus.

still, it’s nice not to remember something for once.

 

entry 36

papyrus put together a near ironclad plan to fool me, but he forgot the minor little detail that everyone in town would be smirking at me the moment i stepped outside. you know, it’s really weird, but i don’t think i was just sleepwalking inside my house last night.

there’s a faun that lives here in snowdin. know the guy, don’t talk to him. he came up to me today when i was (as per the ruthless designs of the universe) at my first sentry post. he said i tried to kill him last night.

i told him that couldn’t be right. if i had meant to kill him then he’d be dead right now.

he didn’t laugh, but he did leave me alone after that. i’d call that a success.

whatever. the anomaly will be here any minute now, and then everyone will forget i’ve ever done anything weird.

 

entry 37

bad news, no one has forgotten i’m weird, likely because the human’s playing good cop all of a sudden. that kid can’t ever do one thing to help me, i swear to god.

undyne practically tackled me in waterfall when i was at my second sentry post (see: continuing cruelty of the universe). “We need to talk.”

never a good sign when undyne says that. or the tackling, honestly, but she tackles a lot of people. i said i was all imaginary ears since skeletons don’t have ears.

she didn’t laugh. she proceeded to tell me the story i had been missing out on since last night. that i had apparently gotten so drunk at grillby’s that i did indeed attempt to fight a faun and also blocked the exit of grillby’s unless someone came up with a satisfactory bone pun.

i said this sounded like the things i usually do even when i’m not drunk.

“You think this is funny, Sans? You think it’s funny that your brother had to be called in the middle of the night so that he could peel you off from the floor?”

no, it wasn’t funny. there wasn’t anything good i could say to that, and undyne knew it.

“You know, Papyrus told me this wasn’t even the first time you’ve done something like this. Sans, what’s going on?”

another question i couldn’t answer. i don’t even know how many times undyne and i have had this conversation. how many times i’ve tried laughing it off, or saying it’s just what every monster is dealing with trapped in the underground, or hand to god telling her the truth. i’ve done it all. i don’t have anything left to say.

“Whatever this is, Sans, you’ve got people around you who want to help. Your brother would do anything if it made you happy. And…I know we don’t know each other as well, but I wouldn’t want to see something bad happen to you.”

she clattered away.

fuck.

 

Entry 38

So, this is not going to come as a shock, especially with the frantic scrawl of my (actual) earlier entries, but it took me a really long time to adjust to…this.

The first few times, I really thought there was some hope that I could get the machine working again, or wrestle control of the timeline from Flowey, or even just disrupt things significantly enough to stop him. I told everyone what I knew all the time.

That solved nothing. Most of the time nobody believed me, or were worried enough about me to put me behind a locked door. On the rare occasions when someone actually understood, Flowey would just reset everything to a time when they didn’t.

This was when I first began to realize how little control I actually had. And how alone I really was.

So one timeline, I snapped. I didn’t want to see what would happen this time around. And there was only one way I knew of that would give me a brief escape.

It changed nothing, of course—I still woke up back in my room, same as always—but it felt good. It felt like I’d taken back some small measure of control.

Something I hadn’t planned on, though, was that Flowey would decide to pay me a visit and lovingly recount everything that had happened in my absence. How Papyrus had been the one to find me, or what was left of me. How he’d collected my dust and gone to Undyne to demand she find some way to fix me. How Undyne had brought him back to our house and stayed with him until everyone could be gathered for the funeral. How so many monsters had come from Snowdin all the way to New Home, just to speak about me. Undyne had said I’d been a passable sentry guard and a much better friend. The Canine Snowdin Unit said that they would miss my pets. Alphys, glancing at Undyne, murmured that I was her second best friend, until she suddenly stamped her foot and, sweating, amended me to first place. Grillby said, crying, that I was the best customer he’d ever had.

Undyne apparently suggested that my dust should be put with my “pet” “rock” (thanks, Undyne), but Papyrus disagreed. I don’t know how he knew, and I still don’t, but he went out back to the workshop and retrieved my photograph and spread my dust over that. Papyrus clutched it tightly until the timeline reset.

Flowey, I’m sure, was curious to see what I’d do with this information. And maybe one of these days I should thank that fucking flower, because I never tried that again. I hadn’t realized how many people would notice when I was gone.

And I can’t change a single thing, I know that, I’m more aware of that than anybody in the universe, but those people, my friends, they matter to me. We matter to each other. And I just have to keep remembering that the next time I feel like doing something stupid.

anyway, enough deep talk. time for me to get to hotland and threaten the anomaly again. because while the most important thing might be keeping papyrus safe and making sure i don’t do anything stupid, the second most important thing is making the human paranoid at all times.

 

entry 39

welp, i still don’t know what’s going to happen, but even if this timeline ends up being a burner, it’s nice to see the sun again, even if only for a moment.

papyrus is all sorts of excited and overly optimistic about this turn of events (again), but i wouldn’t have him any other way.

He makes every day worth living. I mean that.

Maybe tonight I’ll show him the stars, just like someone maybe did for me once. I’ll show him Andromeda and Cassiopeia, and it won’t be a horror to him. It’ll just be a wonder.

He might forget next time around, but I don’t care. He’ll enjoy it now. That’s what matters.

Calgary, here we come.

Notes:

And that's all! Thank you for reading, kudo'ing, and/or commenting! I hope you enjoyed! :D

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Skeletal Thoughts