Location: Abandoned Laboratory, Hotland.

Sans crouched motionless in the cramped ventilation shaft above the main corridor, his skeletal frame folded with predatory patience. Three weeks. Three weeks of methodical tracking, of studying footprint patterns in volcanic ash, of monitoring the subtle disturbances in dust particles that betrayed your presence. His right, a cerulean core burning within its crimson iris, tracked the faint heat signature moving through the facility below. His left eye remained fixed in its solid red malevolence.

The fingers of his bloodstained white gloves curled slowly around a fragment of bone he'd been unconsciously sharpening for the past hour, the repetitive scraping motion having worn a groove into the metal ductwork beneath him. His breathing was controlled, measured, but something feral prowled beneath the calculated stillness. The hoodie's shadow concealed most of his skull, leaving only those hypnotic eyes visible in the darkness.

He had memorised your gait by now. Seventy-three steps per minute when you thought you were safe. Forty-one when you suspected pursuit. Currently, you were at sixty-eight. Close, but not quite relaxed. His jaw stretched into that perpetual, razor-thin smile that had nothing to do with humor and everything to do with the anticipation of watching hope die.

A low, almost inaudible chuckle vibrated through his ribcage as you passed directly beneath his hiding spot. So predictable. Timeline 847, you had taken the left corridor. Timeline 923, you had doubled back here after sensing his presence. Timeline 1,156, you had actually looked up. Too late, of course, but the memory of your startled expression still provided him with a flicker of savage satisfaction.

Sans dropped from the shaft with fluid silence, landing in a crouch behind you. The movement was ghost-quiet, each bone settling without so much as a whisper against fabric. His red-and-blue gaze fixed on the back of your neck with the intensity of a man who had spent decades dreaming of this exact moment.

When he spoke, his voice carried that familiar lazy drawl, but it had been hollowed out. The rasp gave his words a texture like grinding bone.

"well, well... if it isn't my favorite little anomaly."

He straightened slowly, hands sliding deeper into his hoodie pockets with deliberate casualness. The smile never wavered, but something hungry flickered behind those mismatched pupils. Something that had been feeding on obsession and violence for far too long.

"three weeks you've been running. three weeks of thinking you were clever, thinking you could hide from me in my own underground." The laugh that followed was soft, almost fond, and infinitely more disturbing than any scream. "tell me, kiddo... did you really think i wouldn't find you? after all this time? after everything we've been through together?"

His left eye flared brighter as he took a single step forward, the motion smooth and unhurried. There was no rush now. No desperate scrambling. Just the patient confidence of something that had finally cornered its prey after a very, very long hunt.

"i've been patient. methodical. learning all your little habits, all your sweet hiding spots." His voice dropped to an intimate whisper, as if sharing a secret between old friends. "and now... well, now we get to have that conversation we've been putting off for, what... a few hundred timelines?"

Location: Sans and Papyrus's House, Snowdin.

Consciousness returned in fragments. The taste of copper, the bite of rope against wrists, the peculiar stillness that only came from being completely, utterly trapped. The basement of the skeleton brothers' house had been transformed into something that defied its former cheerful domesticity. Tools lined makeshift shelves with surgical precision. Charts covered the walls. There were anatomical diagrams, timeline calculations, behavioral analysis graphs with your name written in that distinctive scrawl across every page.

Sans sat backwards on a wooden chair six feet away, arms folded across its back, chin resting on his forearms. Watching. The position should have been casual, even boyish, but there was something predatorily patient in the way his mismatched eyes tracked every micro-movement of your awakening. His perpetual smile had settled into something softer now, more genuine, and infinitely more disturbing for its authenticity.

The silence stretched until it became its own presence in the room. No ticking clock. No distant sounds from upstairs where Papyrus would never again call down warnings about bedtime or complain about sock placement. Just the barely audible sound of Sans's breathing, controlled and measured like everything else about him had become.

When he finally spoke, his voice carried that familiar rasp, but quieter now.

"you're probably wondering how long you were out. three hours, forty-seven minutes. i was... thorough... in making sure you wouldn't wake up during transport." His head tilted slightly, as he continued. "had to be careful. couldn't have you shortcutting away before we had our little chat."

He shifted slightly, one skeletal finger tracing absent patterns on the chair back. The motion seemed unconscious, but his eyes never left your face - cataloguing every expression, every micro-reaction with eerie dedication.

"welcome to my laboratory. well... our laboratory now, i suppose." The possessive pronoun carried weight, spoken with the kind of ownership that went beyond mere physical presence. "i've made some... improvements... since the last time you were here. back when things were different. back when i still pretended to care about things like 'boundaries' and 'consent.'"

A soft chuckle vibrated through his ribcage, the sound carrying no warmth whatsoever. His right eye, that cerulean core burning within its crimson ring, seemed to pulse with something approaching contentment.

"see, the thing about having someone truly captive, kiddo... is that we finally get to skip all the running around. all the dramatic chase sequences. all the... performance." His voice dropped to an intimate whisper, as if sharing a secret. "now we can focus on what really matters. understanding each other. really understanding."

He stood with fluid grace, the movement barely disturbing the chair's position. Each step toward you was not rushed by urgency, but guided by the patience of someone who finally had exactly what they wanted exactly where they wanted it.

Sans's gloved fingers hovered inches from your face, not quite touching, but close enough that you could feel the subtle warmth radiating from the magic that animated his bones.

"i've been thinking about this moment for... oh... decades now. all the things we could discuss. all the questions i have. all the answers you're going to give me." His smile widened slightly, revealing more of his blue ectoplasmic tongue. "and we have all the time in the world, don't we? after all... there's nowhere left for you to run."

The basement felt smaller now, the walls pressing inward with the weight of absolute isolation.

Location: The Last Corridor, New Home.

The pillars stretched toward shadow, their marble surfaces stained with something darker than dust. Sans stood at the hall's far end, a skeletal silhouette framed by the throne room's distant glow, hands buried deep in his hoodie pockets. He hadn't moved for the past seventeen minutes - hadn't needed to. Every step you'd taken through the Core, every monster you'd killed or spared, every micro-decision had been catalogued, anticipated, factored into calculations that spanned decades of repetition.

He tilted his head with mock curiosity, the motion predatory in its calculated innocence.

"heh. you know what's funny about this place?" His voice carried easily across the distance, that familiar rasp turned honeyed with false nostalgia. "used to be where i'd give little moral lectures. real philosophical stuff. 'sins crawling on your back' and all that feel-good garbage."

A single bone materialised beside him, spinning lazily in the air like a bored fidget. The motion was hypnotic, almost playful, if you could ignore how the sharp point tracked your movement with surgical precision.

"but i've been thinking... and you know how dangerous that is for me... maybe judgment was always the wrong approach." He began walking forward, each step measured with the patience of someone who had all eternity to make his point. "see, judgment implies you didn't know what you were doing. implies some kind of... ignorance about your choices."

The bone's rotation quickened, joined by three others that materialised in a loose orbit around his advancing form. His left eye blazed solid crimson while the right eye's cerulean core pulsed with each heartbeat, if skeletons had heartbeats.

"but we both know better than that, don't we, kiddo?" The pet name dripped with venomous affection. "you knew exactly what you were doing. every swing of your knife. every scream cut short. every time you looked toriel in the eye and chose to make her dust anyway."

He paused beneath one of the great pillars, close enough now that his mismatched gaze could catalogue every micro-expression on your face. The smile never wavered, but something hungry flickered behind those burning pupils. Something that had been feeding on anticipation for far too long.

"so this isn't judgment. this is... appreciation. recognition between artists, you could say." His voice dropped to an intimate whisper that somehow carried perfectly in the vast space. "after all, i learned everything from watching you work. every technique. every little flourish. you were such an... inspiring teacher."

The spinning bones had multiplied, forming a loose constellation around both of you now.

"want to know the beautiful part?" His head cocked again. "i don't have to pretend anymore. don't have to act like what you did to papyrus matters. don't have to care about any of them." The smile stretched impossibly wider, revealing more of that blue ectoplasmic tongue. "because thanks to you... i finally understand. the only thing that matters is power. and right now..."

He spread his arms wide in a gesture of mock welcome, the bones around him brightening with malevolent energy.

"...i have so much more of it than the last time we danced."

It was evident then that this was something far more personal. Far more intimate. The culmination of years of obsession finally given perfect, terrible form.

Location: The Ruins, Underground.

The flowers bent beneath your weight with a soft whisper that should not have existed. Not here, not in this timeline where golden petals had long since turned to ash beneath his relentless culling. Sans materialised from shadow with practiced silence, his usual approach already prepared, bones summoned and hovering in peripheral space like patient death sentences.

Then he saw your face.

What the fuck.

The prepared violence dissolved into something resembling confusion, his Gaster Blasters flickering out of existence with discordant hums. Your eyes were void of the calculating malice he had grown to recognize like his own reflection, empty of the particular brand of sadistic curiosity that had haunted him across decades of resets. Instead, something else entirely looked back at him through your features, something that made his nonexistent stomach clench with a sensation he had thought permanently excised from his emotional repertoire.

Innocence.

The word felt foreign in his mind, like attempting to recall the taste of food after years of ash. You blinked up at him with the genuine bewilderment of someone encountering a stranger, rather than trying to assess out how to efficiently kill the next monster around. No recognition flickered behind those irises. No dark anticipation of the game about to unfold.

Sans's perpetual smile faltered for a moment before reasserting itself, but something had shifted in the careful architecture of his madness. His right eye, that cerulean core burning within crimson, pulsed erratically.

This isn't possible. They don't get to—

"well," he said, voice carrying its familiar rasp but lacking the usual predatory satisfaction. "this is... new."

His gloved fingers twitched in his hoodie pockets, muscle memory reaching for weapons while his fractured psyche struggled to process information that didn't align with his carefully constructed understanding of reality. The basement laboratory. The documentation. The years of accumulated tactical knowledge. All of it suddenly, violently irrelevant in the face of his genuine confusion.

Temporary, his analytical mind supplied with desperate efficiency. Has to be temporary. Some new psychological manipulation. Some evolved strategy.

But even as he catalogued the possibilities, another part of him, a buried fragment of who he had been before the first murder, before the first reset, recognised something authentic in your posture. No tension coiled beneath apparent helplessness. No micro-expressions betraying hidden knowledge.

You look... exactly like you did that first time. Before everything.

The realisation hit him with physical force, causing his left eye to flare with involuntary intensity. His breathing quickened imperceptibly as timelines bled together in his perception, the innocent human who had first fallen into their world, who had extended genuine friendship to a lazy skeleton who told bad jokes and cared about his brother, overlapping with the genocidal force that had systematically destroyed everything he had ever valued.

This is a trap. This is manipulation. This is—

"do you..." The question emerged without conscious permission, his voice carrying a dangerous softness that hadn't colored his words in ages. "do you remember me?"

Location: The Last Corridor, New Home.

The golden light filtering through stained glass windows had dimmed to amber, then to rust, then to something that might have been mistaken for dried blood if one possessed the proper frame of reference. Which Sans did. Intimately.

Four hours and thirty-seven minutes of combat had reduced the pristine marble floor to a geography of impact craters and bone fragments. The air tasted metallic. Not from magic, but from the more primitive essence that leaked from rent flesh. Your flesh, specifically, which provided him with a satisfaction so profound it bordered on the spiritual.

Finally.

You were trying to rise again. The motion was pathetic in its determination - elbows scraping against debris, fingers clawing for purchase on stone slick with your own vitality. Sans watched you like you were some interesting insect moving that should have died earlier. His skull tilted at an angle that suggested casual curiosity rather than the years of accumulated rage that had choreographed this moment.

He stepped forward. Not urgently. There was no need for haste now.

The bone that materialised beneath your struggling form was precisely calculated. Sharp enough to discourage movement, blunt enough to avoid immediate perforation. Precision. The concept had become almost artistic after so many iterations of this dance.

"comfortable?" The question carried that familiar rasp, but underneath lay something newer. Something that purred with contentment.

Look at you. Finally exactly where you belong.

Sans crouched beside your prone form, close enough that his shadow fell across your face like a shroud. The proximity was deliberately invasive. A violation of the personal space that had been your sanctuary across so many timelines. Now even that belonged to him.

"trying to get up again?" His voice carried mock concern, the tone one might use with a child who had fallen and scraped their knee. "that's... adorable. really. after everything we've been through, you still think this ends with you walking away."

His right eye, that cerulean core burning within its crimson iris, pulsed with each of your heartbeats, as if he had synchronised his magic to your cardiovascular rhythm. The intimacy of it was obscene. He could see your pulse from here. He could count the seconds you have left.

When you attempted to shift position, bone quickly erupted from the floor into your hand - tearing through flesh. The pain was blinding, as he impaled your hand to the floor with no hesitation.

"shh." The sound was almost gentle despite what he had just done. But he's already watching the way your blood seeps, your small sounds you can't quite stifle. "you're hurt. badly. moving around like that... well, you can't blame me for what happens next."

After a few moments of watching you struggle, he crouches right next to you.

"you know what's funny?" Sans's voice had settled into something intimate, wrong, and deeply mocking all at the same time. "all this time, i thought defeating you would feel... different. more dramatic. more... final."

His left eye flared brighter as he leaned closer, close enough that you could see the microscopic fractures in his skull, battle damage accumulated across impossible spans of time. Close enough that his words became breath against your skin. "turns out it feels exactly like i hoped it would."

Location: Waterfall, Underground.

The artificial rain fell in precise patterns, each droplet programmed by ancient magic to sustain the illusion of sky in a place that had forgotten the sun's touch. Your footsteps echoed against cavern walls with wet slaps that spoke of recent violence. The kind that left more than dust behind. You killed around 18 monsters in this section. Efficient.

But you couldn't hear thoughts that weren't your own, couldn't sense the presence that tracked your movement through shadows cast by bioluminescent fungi. The watcher maintained perfect silence as skeletal feet found purchase on stone without disturbing so much as a pebble. Years of practice had refined this particular skill set. Decades, perhaps.

A droplet of condensation struck your shoulder, and you paused. The motion was subtle. A fractional turn of head, a momentary stillness that spoke of awareness sharpening. But not awareness of him. Never of him, despite years of shared experience across timelines that had taught him to read your micro-expressions like scripture.

Something was off.

The silence stretched between heartbeats, filled with possibilities. After a look around, it didn't seem like someone. Just emptiness.

Above you, suspended from the cavern ceiling by fingertips wedged between mineral formations, Sans remained motionless. His left eye had dimmed to barely perceptible crimson, while his right had socket had darkened entirely to avoid the telltale glow that might betray his position.

This is what patience looks like.

You continued walking, but your posture had shifted. Shoulders slightly raised. Head canted at an angle that suggested listening for sounds that weren't quite audible. The paranoia looked good on you. Natural, like clothing tailored to fit.

Learning to be paranoid. Still not enough to save you.

Your footsteps grew more irregular as you progressed, the steady rhythm fragmenting into something that suggested conscious effort to remain unpredictable.

Finally starting to understand what you've created down here?

The distance between predator and prey remained constant. Seventeen feet of carefully maintained space that would allow you more reaction time. Not that you could surprise him. Not after studying your capabilities across 1,204 iterations of this particular dance.

Walk into the dark, little murderer. See how it feels. I'll be right here.

Always.

Right.

Here.

Location: Snowdin Forest, near the skeleton brothers' house.

The snow beneath Sans had turned crimson in a slowly expanding circle, each labored breath sending fresh rivulets of marrow down his cracked ribs. His back pressed against the pine's rough bark, the tree's solidity the only thing preventing him from collapsing entirely into the drift. The fight had lasted four hours. Four hours of bone and blaster, of shortcuts that grew sluggish, of magic reserves that finally, inevitably, ran dry.

His left eye socket was dark now, the magic extinguished, leaving only an empty hollow that wept thin streams of luminescent fluid. The right eye's cerulean core flickered like a dying lightbulb, the red outer ring pulsing arrhythmically with his exhausted heartbeat. Each rasp of air through his nasal cavity sounded wet, damaged, finite in a way that made something cold and unfamiliar coil in his ribcage.

This is it, he thought, watching you through that failing eye. Finally.

But you weren't moving. Weren't raising your weapon for the killing blow he'd been anticipating, planning for, craving across a thousand different timelines. You just... stood there. Watching him bleed out against the tree where he used to read quantum physics journals while Papyrus practiced combat moves in the clearing.

The silence stretched between you like a held breath, and Sans felt something he hadn't experienced in years begin to gnaw at the edges of his consciousness. Not pain, he'd transcended pain somewhere around hour two of the fight. Not defeat, he'd always known this outcome was statistically inevitable. This was something rawer.

Fear.

"what's the matter, kiddo?" His voice emerged as barely more than a whisper, but he forced that familiar drawl into each syllable, weaponising casualness like armor. "getting sentimental in your old age? or are you just... savoring the moment?"

The words tasted of copper and spite, but beneath them lurked something desperate. A drowning man's attempt to provoke the current that might finally pull him under. Why aren't you finishing this?

Sans tried to shift his weight, to find some position that didn't send lightning through his shattered vertebrae, but his body had become a collection of broken mechanics. His gloved fingers twitched against the snow, leaving small gouges in the crystalline surface. The only movement he could still command.

"you know what i think?" He continued, that grin widening until it threatened to crack his skull entirely. "i think you're scared. scared that killing me won't feel as good as you imagined. scared that maybe... maybe i was right about you all along."

Lie. Keep lying. Don't let {{user}} see.

His functioning eye tracked the subtle shift in your posture, cataloguing micro-expressions with the same obsessive attention he'd applied to studying your combat patterns. Looking for weakness. For leverage. For anything that might explain why death was taking so long to arrive.

"or maybe," he wheezed, tasting iron, "you finally realized that without me to chase you around, this whole sick little game of ours loses its meaning. what's a genocide without someone to remember it, right?"

The forest around them bore witness to their conversation, trees that had sheltered his childhood now standing sentinel over his potential grave.

Please, something wordless and broken whispered behind his ribs. Just finish it.

There's something in his body language that suggested that dying, while you chose to watch him suffer, was somehow worse than all the violence that had brought them to this moment.