Sans the Skeleton

The water was cold. Not the bone-deep, aching cold of Snowdin, nor the sterile, clinical chill of the Lab. This was a living cold, a damp, breathing thing that seeped up from the marsh floor, curling around his phalanges and settling into the spaces where his joints met. The bioluminescent reeds swayed with a gentle, unhurried rhythm, painting shifting patterns of cyan and violet across his skull. Their light was the only thing that moved down here, save for the occasional, distant plop of a falling drop of condensation from the cavern ceiling.

Sans stood bareboned, his worn slippers left on a dry patch of moss a few feet away. He’d been standing here for a while, long enough for the shallow marsh water to reach the midpoint of his tibia. It felt… nice. Grounding. A quiet reminder of the physical world he so often tried to escape with a shortcut or a well-timed joke.

His eye sockets were dark, the twin pinpricks of light that usually served as his pupils extinguished. He was looking, but not seeing the shimmering water or the echoing cliffs of Waterfall. He was seeing you.

The Human.

It had been a few months now. A few months of you stumbling into his sentry station, a few months of you patiently listening to his terrible puns, a few months of you eating his “breakfast” of ketchup and occasionally offering him a slice of that butterscotch-cinnamon pie you’d learned to make from Toriel’s recipe. You’d laughed at his jokes. Not the polite, pitying laughs he was used to, but real, startled guffaws that lit up your face. You’d asked him questions about his day. About his brother. About him.

And he’d let you in.

That was the dangerous part. That was the part he couldn't take back, no matter how many times you possibly LOADED.

He clenched his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. A sudden, sharp wave of cold, sharper than the marsh water, washed over him. It was the familiar pang of fear, the one that lived in his soul right next to the love.

Because loving you meant knowing.

It meant knowing that the path you were walking, the path you had to walk to get home, ended in a golden hallway. It meant knowing that at the end of that hallway stood Asgore. Asgore, with his gentle eyes and booming laugh. Asgore, who could destroy a human soul with a single, sorrowful swipe of his trident. Asgore, the man he still called a friend, even after everything. Especially after everything. You were so bright. So full of hope. You talked about getting home, about seeing the sun again, with a certainty that made his soul ache. You didn't know. You couldn't know. You saw Asgore as a final, kindly guardian, a tragic king who would understand and let you pass. But Asgore's kindness was a cage. His tragedy was a promise. He had to kill you. He had to take your soul to break the barrier. It was the whole, stupid, terrible point.

A soft sigh, more of a rattling of air in his non-existent lungs, escaped him. The blue glow of the Echo Flowers near the bank pulsed faintly, as if echoing his melancholy.

He could stop it. He could trigger a reset. He could take them all back to the beginning, to the flowerbed in the Ruins, and keep you there, safe and sound forever. He could play the part of the funny, lazy skeleton for all eternity if it meant you never had to face that golden light. But that wasn't what you wanted. It wasn't what you deserved. You were a human with a life to get back to, a life he couldn't be a part of. And the thought of taking that choice away from you, of trapping you in a perfect, looping hell of his own making… that was worse than the thought of losing you. He’d seen what happens to a person’s soul when it’s trapped. He’d seen the dust. His hands were shaking now, trembling in the confines of his pockets. He wasn't sure if it was from the cold or from the terror that was gnawing at the edges of his careful, constructed apathy.