Chapter Text
For all the twelve years he has lived, Sans has only known the Arctic as his home.
It’s not a cozy place to live. The wind is biting – though Sans can’t feel the cold, the howling wind is still inconvenient at least and merciless at most. The wind can take, and it can destroy, in its unpredictability. Additionally, snowy, white, empty landscapes for hundreds and hundreds of miles isn’t actually as novel a sight as it sounds; the sheer brightness is blinding (although his eyes are always quick to adjust), and when it’s not, the blank fields are nothing short of daunting. Isolating.
Sans has never known community, has never been to a town, has never known personally more people than he can count on his two hands. When he sometimes reads the books that Gaster has saved, there are stories of countries and villages and friends. It doesn’t warm his soul like the synopsis on the back of the book says it should.
It doesn’t matter. Sans has Papyrus. He has Gaster too, but they don’t click the same as he and his bro do. Sans has read the books, felt the feelings. He may have never gone to a school or hung out with a group of pals, but he knows what a family is. He’s got his own little world, all together, packed away on a snowy island.
Except… there’s more world out there. Obviously, Sans isn’t an idiot – he was made by Gaster, it just isn’t a possibility to be stupid – but he’s not just talking about the land beyond the Arctic; the people, the mythical humans. No. There’s another world below. A world Gaster calls their home; a place that Sans, or Papyrus, have never been. A world full of monsters like them.
It’s weird to think that his allegiance belongs to a place where he’s never been. Shouldn’t your region of origin be a place you know like the back of your hand, a place from which you can recall fond memories of? He doesn’t feel any nostalgia or homeliness at all for this so-called Ebott. He was born and raised in the Arctic. All he truly feels is bitter.
Bitter because he’s never experienced it. Bitter because Gaster never even gave them a chance in the first place. Bitter because Gaster has felt it, lived in it, and decided to leave anyway. Why would someone leave that? Why, when they had a warm bed to return to, loving arms to rest in? What was so good out here that Gaster had to leave?
Sans knows there’s an answer to these questions; an answer that he’s heard over and over again. “To liberate monsterkind, Sans.”
Sans understands that, logically, Gaster’s little expedition makes sense. Years (hundreds– thousands– long before Sans came into this world) of oppression have passed by, and while monsterkind naturally leans towards peace, their yearning for freedom and a home they had long ago far overpowers this natural stance. They don’t just sit there and take it. Sans knows, because he’s felt it deep in his bones. An unnatural urge to power through and win whatever it was that he wanted.
Still, something in his skull argues with these facts. Yes, monsterkind needs freedom, and yes, Gaster going away makes sense as he was (assumably) a notorious experimental hands-on scientist – but what about everything else? His emotions, his feelings – or the emotions of the people, their feelings? Do they feel that his presence is gone? Does he feel their absence? Why would someone ever leave that behind, even if temporarily?
There were other ways to liberate monsterkind, Sans knows. This option was by far the riskiest. Hell, Sans barely even knows how Gaster got onto the surface – at a place so far away, too. From what he’s heard and understood, him appearing on the surface in one complete piece was barely even a fraction of a one percent chance. There were an infinite amount of chances where Gaster never got out of that void, never left that machine, and never came out completely alive again.
(Sometimes, he thinks about what life would be like if that were the outcome with much shame and curiosity.)
Though, if there were one thing that Sans likes about the Arctic (other than it being his home, of course), it would be the sky.
Sans remembers Gaster telling him about his first night on the surface. He hadn’t slept a wink, apparently. He had spent all ten hours of sundown staring up at the night with wide eyes.
“The stars were like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Gaster had told him. “The stonewalls of Waterfall could not even achieve the greatness of this sky. Why, they’re practically incomparable!”
Sans never had the plight to not have a sky to stare up at, and for that, he is eternally grateful. The stars, the constellations, all suns, moons, and planets have always fascinated him. They were the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He remembers when he was a smaller pup, staying up late just to trace the constellations from his window with his finger. It never grew old.
He’s memorized all he can see from the base by now. Ursa Minor, Draco, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Cancer, Hydra, Hercules, Lyra – Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the moon. Sometimes, when he slips out of bed and walks circles outside the base (never any further), he can spot Andromeda in the clearest of skies. It’s happened thrice.
Sometimes, Sans dreams of these astronomical items calling to him. The dreams are admittedly pretty weird. For one, he can’t fly (he’s pretty sure he can’t, although he hasn’t checked in a while), and secondly, stars can’t talk (of which he’s also pretty sure of). But in these dreams, they sing siren songs, and they twinkle enticingly bright. It always ends when he reaches his hand out to the sun after bouncing off of Mercury, and the sun reaches back. It’s a good dream, he thinks.
Most dreams are good dreams, Sans also thinks.
Sans is thirteen and a half when the void opens up and swallows someone. He doesn’t really know who, but something nagged at him to try and remember. He felt like a puzzle piece of him got tugged off, but a little notch stayed stuck in his side.
However, in exchange for that, he got a new buddy. She’s yellow, twitchy, kinda awkward, and her name is Alphys. Just as that guy disappeared and went, she arrived from the very same void. It was weird. Very weird. They shook hands like business partners after she had passed out several times.
Surprisingly, they already knew each other. Sans’ spotted her name in some notes (that he had not taken himself) as well as in some decoded numbers sent with pairs of coordinates over the last few years. In fact, he’s been aware of her existence for a while. Alphys shared with him the same sentiment.
He had always thought of this mysterious Alphys person as someone more serious, older. He wouldn’t call what he felt when he saw someone barely older than him surprise, but it was definitely something like it. When she shook his hand, her hand trembled, and when he made a fart noise between his teeth, she trembled harder. She was not remotely close to what he was expecting at all.
When Sans stood off to the side, boredly watching Papyrus and Alphys meet, he felt something mentally clasp onto him and try to give him a good rocking-shake. It was like looking for more candy in an empty jar. He was forgetting something, but what? Who? Who? It was important. It felt pretty important.
Something fell in the void. The survival of that was barely even a fraction of a one percent chance. Whoever fell into there probably got turned into shreds. Someone fell into the void? If the survival rate was so low, then how had Alphys made it out safely? What were the chances that transport through this machine was safe twice in a row – and how does Sans know it happened twice? Who fell into the void?
“SANS!!! SANS!!!”
Sans sees his brother’s face in front of his, half a foot shorter. Dang, he’s getting tall. Sans wishes he grew as fast – he still has eleven years to grow, but he grows so slow someone had sworn to him upside down that turtles could walk faster than the rate that he elongates. Papyrus bounces on his heels in front of him.
“yeah, bro?”
“THE MACHINE, SANS!!! IT’S—”
“It–it’s blinking…!!! I, uh, I think that means it’s—”
Something buzzes, hums, fizzes, and then pops. All the lights go out, leaving the three of them in darkness. Feintly, Sans smells smoke and aster.
“... huh.”
Unsurprisingly, Sans and Papyrus can see adequately in the dark. They squint at each other, one more panicked than the other. Papyrus looks away when he hears a squeak.
When Sans’ head swivels around, spotting Alphys, he remembers that not everybody is well adapted to the dark nor does everyone have night vision. Her head swishes back and forth, trying to see something with a grimace on her face. Her hands are held up, fingers twitching around nothing but air, and she looks a little distressed.
Papyrus moves towards her before he does. Seeing this, Sans stays still in place, hands now shoved in his pockets.
“Alphys, Are You Okay?” Papyrus’ attempt of a whisper becomes background noise, voices fading away as Sans approaches what he can see of the machine.
“Yeah–yes, I’m fine. Are–uhm, are you okay?”
Something crunches underneath his foot. Lifting his boot up, Sans spots what he thinks is glass. Not a good sign. He continues to walk forward.
Papyrus’ head flicks towards his direction far faster than Alphys does. His eyelights in the dark are sharp, clear, and twitchy–watching, taking in anything he can see. It gives Alphys’ a little bit of light to really see anything.
When Sans glances behind his shoulder, his eyelights equally as bright but less clear, his face is illuminated by the lights both of the brothers naturally have coming out of their eye holes. This time, Alphys really gets a good look at him. In the dark, he’s one of the only three things she can see in here.
She’d thought he’d been a little yellowish earlier, but maybe it’d just been the lighting. Now, Sans looks pure white. She’s vaguely reminded of the fresh snow she’d seen in Snowdin when she visited. She wasn’t a big fan of cold weather, nor did it fit her biologically.
There’s a few small nicks in his skull, nothing too deep. They all look like mild scratches at most, something easily healable that should’ve gone away a long time ago. She can’t imagine why they seemed to be permanent. Was there something wrong with his magic? Does he need candy?
Her eyes forcibly glance down. His teeth are so sharp, that they sort of just take her attention automatically. Alphys thinks of the books she’s read of sharks and wolves and dangerous animals, all above ground. His canines seem a bit more sharper, more larger than the rest, just barely. Still, the corners of his smile are soft and rounded, and when he tilts his head a little, she can't decide if he looks goofy or intimidating.
“just some glass.” Sans says calmly. Papyrus nods while Alphys continues to squint at him, even after he turns away.
She doesn’t think she’s ever met a monster like Sans. Or Papyrus, for that matter. She glances at the younger of the two brothers.
He’s a lot lankier. Got a lot less notches on him too – so are the scratches just a Sans thing? Is their magic so different from one another, really? Was Papyrus’ heal factor stronger, his magic more sufficient, or was Sans’ magic just lacking? Thoughts go through Alphys’ mind, faster and faster and faster, thinking and thinking.
Maybe Papyrus just didn’t get scratched much. Seeing his lankiness, it’s easy to imagine that he’s more swift than his brother, more physically evasive. Still, it doesn’t explain why such small scratches are stuck permanently on Sans. Such things are so easy to get rid of.
There’s another crunch, and then another, and another. Alphys hears the scuffle of boots before Sans huffs.
“machine’s busted.”
What? Alphys feels like she had just jumped into the void again. Dread claws at her, cold and wrong. They needed that machine.
She takes a step forward. She forgets, momentarily, that she cannot see and that there are shards of glass on the floor, because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because she needs that machine, the CORE, the void. Monsterkind needs it. Years of waiting have passed, and now, there has to be more?
Something crunches under her foot, but she doesn’t cringe or falter. She doesn’t stop until she’s at Sans’ side. His eyelights highlight the machine, smoking.
“it’s okay.” Sans says simply. His casualty is great and all, but to Alphys, it feels a little insulting.
“we’ll fix it.” He lifts a hand with sharp claws and pats her shoulder gently. He says it as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Alphys wishes it was.