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Sans took a deep breath, trying to regain his equilibrium. It didn’t work. He still felt like trash .
Seriously, what was he? First, he had convinced Frisk to date him against the protests of her friends and family. (He’d taken so, so much relief from the fact that Frisk herself seemed...well, not enthusiastic , really, but happy .) He’d taken the lead in their relationship. He usually texted her first. When they went out together, either he paid or they split the bill. He planned more than half their weekly dates. Oh, Frisk had offered to help - still offered every week, unless she was truly swamped with her ambassadorial duties - but he took pride in doing this one little thing for her. It was his vague attempt to prove to her how much she meant to him.
And yet, after all his time and effort, he’d come to the conclusion that...that they weren’t right for each other. Here he sat, in a restaurant neither of them really liked but both tolerated (‘neutral ground,’ he’d thought when making plans for the evening) waiting to break up with her.
He groaned into his palms. Maybe he wouldn’t go through with it. Maybe he’d put it off. Maybe he’d feel differently in a few days, or a few weeks.
“...Sans?”
Frisk was standing by the table already, looking absolutely stunning in her formal office wear. Sans gulped as she sat. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t lead her on any more.
“Sans, are you okay?”
“...heh. yeah, i-i’m okay.”
Frisk closed her eyes, her posture screaming defeat. Sans slumped in sympathy. He really was the worst.
“i mean…”
“It’s okay, Sans,” she said. She was smiling, but he could see tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. “Just...just say what you want to say. Then we can decide if we want to eat dinner together, or get something to go.”
“okay.” Heh. He felt a ball of guilt weigh heavily in his nonexistent gut. He didn’t deserve her.
“Sans?”
“yeah, just...give me a moment.” He took a deep breath, then carefully threaded his shaking hands together under the table. His eye sockets squeezed shut. “frisk...we’ve been dating for almost six months. i-i want you to know that i really appreciate everything you’ve done for me. i really am a better person for having gotten to know you like this.
“it’s just...i don’t think we’re cut out for this type of relationship. i can’t begin to tell you how absolutely disgusted i am with myself that i led you on, especially after i forced you into this to begin with-”
A soft hand on his face forced his eye sockets open. Frisk was looking at him with a look of such unflinching compassion that his soul skipped a beat. There were tears streaming down her face, messing up her carefully painted eyes and cheeks, but she still looked beautiful to him.
“Don’t,” she whispered, wiping something off his own cheekbones. “Sans, whatever happened...it isn’t your fault, okay? You don’t owe me anything. Th-that’s the point of dating, right? It’s just to see if we’re good for each other. We haven’t made any promises to stay together. You don’t need to feel guilty about this...and please, please don’t talk down about yourself, okay?”
He breathed a shuddering breath. “o-okay.”
She smiled. “Oh, I’m a mess. Why don’t we get something to go and head to the park?”
They ordered their burgers and fries to go and made their way down the block. They sat side by side on what they had deemed ‘their’ bench. Sans wondered if he’d ever have the courage to sit there again without her. Or...maybe she’d still join him after his shifts at the hot dog stand? Was that a thing friends did? He really didn’t know.
Something struck him about the way Frisk handed him his burger and fries without even looking in the bag. “you...you’ve seen this before. you’ve done this before.”
She nodded, focused on her knees.
“what-but how?”
She took a deep breath. “Chara.”
“ch-wait, what? that demon? ”
“This...has happened a few times, actually.” She ducked her head like she expected him to retaliate, but Sans just felt numb. “The first time I got us out of the Underground, everyone was happy. I was happy. I thought we could live in peace forever. I promised myself that I would never, ever RESET again.”
“why? i always thought making friends with us was something you’d want to repeat.” It was the best explanation he’d come up with for the various timelines that showed up in his calculations.
She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Do you think I want to relive dying over and over as a wimpy little teenager? Yeah, you guys are my friends, but I’m still friends with all of you even with the barrier broken. Sure, we’ve all had our arguments, and it’s tempting to do something every time someone gets hurt or sad...but that’s just life, really. Even that first time around, I had no guarantees that a RESET would actually fix anything. For all I knew, I’d just make things worse.
“Chara had other ideas. It happened about five years after we broke the barrier. I got jumped in an alleyway by a pair of thugs with a gun. I didn’t have my phone, I couldn’t call anyone, and...and…”
Sans hesitantly put a hand on her shoulder. “shh, shh...just breathe. breathe. there you go. so...you died?”
“No. I...Sans, I killed them.”
His breath hitched.
She took her handgun out of her bag. Her human security personnel made her carry it everywhere, just in case. Sans remembered, now, how she had cried the night they gave it to her. He’d thought at the time that it was some overreaction to owning a deadly weapon, but…
“I mean, it was self-defense. It was literally them or me. I received hostage training that time around too, you know. I tried talking them down. They weren’t interested. They wanted...well, it doesn’t matter what they wanted. The point is, it was either them or me and I...I did what I had to to stay alive.
“That...was okay. I disappointed a lot of people who couldn’t understand, but almost everyone else did. Undyne did. Dad did. You...mostly did, I think. You were there for me, at least, and it really drew us closer. Papyrus and Mom had a really hard time coming to terms with it, so I wound up living with Dad for a bit.
“That’s when the problems started. I started blacking out, losing long stretches of the day. We...you and I started dating around then, and you kept me grounded. Everyone was happy about it, that time around. Well, except maybe Mom, but she’s...Mom. She’s a little over-protective. I think she was really more upset about me moving out and about the attack than anything else.
“So when you said, six months after we started dating, that you’d found someone else...well, I was pretty broken up.”
Sans winced. She said it so clinically, like she was delivering one of her political speeches, but he could see the echoes of pain on her face. He’d hurt her quite badly, he deduced.
“Mom...hadn’t been having the greatest few months. She came over to Dad’s place and pretty much staged an intervention, but it was more of a platform for her to say ‘I told you so’ and throw it back in Dad’s face. It was...bad. We got in an argument. She attacked me.” Frisk breathed deeply, but her white knuckles betrayed her distress. “Chara took over. By the time I wrestled control back...”
Sans could guess what had happened from there. “did...did any of us get out alive?”
“Well, you did, on account of you not being at my pity party. N-no one else, though.”
“p-papyrus?”
Her silence was enough. Sans rested his skull on his hands. No matter how many times he heard about Chara’s escapades, it never got easier.
“I couldn’t leave them like that, obviously. The problem is...well, I’m not sure how, but Chara managed to do something to my SAVE. I...I don't know if it was on purpose or not, or what happened; she's never answered me. All I know is that I couldn’t reach it. I don’t know if she saved over it, or corrupted it, or if it was just gone , but I couldn’t LOAD.”
“so you reset.”
“Well, yeah . None of you deserved that. Yes, it meant reliving five years, but I...wasn’t in the best frame of mind at the time.”
“so that was the first time. you said we’ve done this more than once.”
“It follows a pattern. I go through the Underground. After a few tries, we break the barrier. Five years on the surface, then something happens. I’m forced to kill in self-defense, or to save someone else. It’s usually some guys with a gun - not really a whole lot of ways out, if I can’t talk them out of it. I never can. Last time around, I tried everything I could think of. I got shot anyways and bled out eighteen times before I finally resigned myself to taking them out in self-defense.”
“gosh, kid. why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“You asked me not to.”
“ what?? ”
“That first time, right before I RESET? I found you and told you everything. You...you were furious and guilty. I never, never want to see you like that again. In exchange for helping me try to figure out what was going wrong, you made me promise to never tell you anything about all this in any timeline unless you figured out enough to ask. I’m not sure I should’ve told you now, except…”
“...except you haven’t killed anyone this time.”
“Yeah. And you did ask, kinda. I think, at this point, we’ve made it far enough that someone else should know. I did my part. I played it safe this time. I tried not to go anywhere without at least one other person. I convinced Alphys to make me an emergency button that alerts my security detail, Mom, Dad, and you if something goes wrong. I’ll have to have her take you off, now that...well, anyways...”
Sans’s eye sockets snapped back to her. “the alleyway behind grillby’s, a few weeks before we started dating. you sent that weird text, and your mom was panicking even before I came and picked you up…she’s on your text list.”
“Yeah. I think that was supposed to be the...the event. Chara thinks so, at least; she’s been unusually restless lately. Without any EXP, though, she can’t do much.”
“and yet...you agreed to go out with me. after everything, you agreed to go out with me.”
To Sans’s shock, Frisk blushed and looked away. “...Yeah.”
“ why? ”
She turned back, still red. “It’s...it’s worth it to me.” She held up a hand to cut off his protests. “I tried not dating you, and it didn’t actually...change anything in the timeline. I still was put in a situation where I had to gain EXP. Chara still took over, still killed everyone once we were all together. I promise, I wasn’t trying to take advantage of you. I just...just…”
“frisk, i…”
“It’s nothing.” She straightened, looking almost regal. “So, you see, you don’t have to apologize. In fact, I apologize for leading you on. I knew what your feelings...would be, I guess. We’ve never lasted more than six months before you decide we aren’t good together, or you find someone else. Even if...even if you don’t want to see me again after this, I really, really appreciate the time we’ve spent together.” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but shook her head instead.
Sans’s mind was a whirlwind. Not only the murder-of-everyone thing - the sting of that was an old one, and he’d be okay in time - but the fact that Frisk knew that Sans would dump her eventually, and had still agreed to date him. That, he thought, was telling. From what she said, he always broke up with her . What were her feelings on the matter? Why would she repeat this process for an untold number of timelines? Had he ever figured it out before? Were things different enough this time to prevent another RESET?
The scientist in him desperately wanted to know, but he pushed it away. There would be time for that later. Right now… “hey, frisk, i...uh...really need some time. oh, don’t look like that. i just need to process some stuff. okay?”
“Okay. Thanks for not...yelling.”
“not your fault, kiddo, really. you’re just trying to do the right thing.”
Hours later, lying in bed and staring at his ceiling, Sans could still see the echo of her stiff smile behind his eye sockets. He realized, suddenly, that he’d left her alone and crying on a bench three miles from home. Some boyfriend he was. Except that wasn’t true anymore, was it? He still felt guilty. He brought up her image again.
She hadn’t touched her burger.