Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Within Snowdin Library, something masquerading as human walked up to a wooden shelf and, with hands covered in dusty powder, picked up a red book. Its fingers slowly traced the unblemished spine, which had no creases or folds, acknowledging the evident care with which the pristine book had been preserved. It paused, hummed, and then‐

Crack! The spine snapped, pages nearly torn. It teared it open and began to read.

"Monster funerals, technically speaking, are cool as heck. When monsters get old and kick the bucket, they turn into dust. At funerals, we take that dust and spread it on that person’s favorite thing. Then their essence will live on in that thing... Uhhh, am I at the page minimum yet? I’m kinda sick of writing this."

It violently tossed the school report to the floor, sickened and nauseated, recoiling in complete disgust. The creature stormed out, clutching the hilt of its shining knife tight, revulsion fueling its determination. Blemished with a shattered spine, creased and folded, the book wept on the soft orange carpet.

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It's quiet, notably silent. A faint breeze slowly drags his wooly hood to the side, cold air sending a gentle shiver down his spine as it settles in his ribcage. It's strange, walking through a once bustling place now deserted. It feels surreal, hauntingly so. If he had hair, his hair would be standing on edge. Sans takes everything in, pale snow crunching softly beneath his pink slippers.

Snowdin town and its buildings are empty, dead silent. All the lights are out. Everybody who could evacuated as news spread of countless monsters falling down to a violent human child. Even the Snowdin Canine Unit with their reputation of bravery, strength, and power had fled from his knowledge, to assist those who left to seek safety he assumes. All of them left. Except him. He couldn't really budge. With how heavy things felt, weighing him down, he just didn't have it in him. Or maybe that was just an excuse for being a lazybones, hell if he knew. It doesn't matter either way.

Sans can't help but pause as he passes by Snowdin Shop. Once a brightly lit, orange store, filled with shelves full of colorful materials and wares, now barren with battered shelves left bare. The metal till contains nothing but specks of dust, all gold clearly having been stolen alongside everything else. A fearful note left by the shopkeeper sits on the countertop, reading 'Please don't hurt my family'. 

He continues walking, dragging his feet across the snow. Visible gashes are etched deep in the ground surrounding him, quick and sharp and violent, and thick dust is spread around everywhere he looks. Piles and piles of it; collecting against the once strong walls of Snowed Inn, burying the gifts beneath the now rotting Gyftmas tree, forming in front of Grillby's. Gusts of howling wind blow and blow it all around, particles swirling in the air and falling, filling in hollow footprints left by monsters who are long gone.

It's only when Sans walks a little further, he spots something. Something that makes his soul ache, hammer against his ribcage, tighten and constrict in its instinctual familiarity. Keeping his breathing slow and steady, he numbly moves closer and closer. It's undeniable what he sees. Painful, beyond painful, so painful his soul is screaming, but expected nonetheless. Regardless of the shock burning relentlessly in his chest, this was expected. He knew this would happen. Now, it has. It's happened and there's no point to denying it.

Blinking, he stares at the dust of someone who meant everything to him. He doesn't try to deny it in any way, taking it fully at face value, because it doesn't matter what he thinks or believes or does. It doesn't matter. Papyrus is dead. Nothing will change how his brother, his awesome and cool brother, has fallen down. Excrutiatingly, his soul surges with every use of the past tense he forces himself to use. He has to accept this. He can't say he's surprised. Just that, maybe, he'd hoped to see him again. But it's too late now. Papyrus truly was far too good for this world.

Silently, Sans mourns. 

He wonders that in another timeline, Papyrus is alive and well. Another version of him happier than ever before, with a new friend enthusiastic about his puzzles who happily munches his frozen spaghetti with a warm smile, creating joyful and precious memories one after the other. But that's not here, not this timeline, and never will be. Papyrus, his Papyrus, is dead.

Sans continues to stand there, trying to come to any kind of proper conclusion but he's in too much pain for that. There's nothing he can do to change anything. His brother is dead and, he accepts, it doesn't matter. Everything could be reset now and he wouldn't even know it. For all he knows, this might not even be the first time he's discovered his brother's dust. First time, second time, hundredth time... it doesn't matter in the end.

Scattered in the snow quietly and peacefully, barely distinguishable by texture, the slightly brighter tone, that's all that's left of him.

"welp." Sans walks away, disappointed. "that's that then."

Taking a shortcut, he goes home. Then, he returns shortly holding a ceramic mug in his hand. He's not sure they collected it, much less kept it. On it, is a picture of Papyrus neat in its slight sketchiness. Looking back fondly at the memory, he recalls how his younger brother had found a box of crayons in the dump and spent an hour decorating it. The crayons were all yellow, barely visible against the white of the cup, but... visible. 

Sans steps forwards, careful and cautious, and scoops as much of his brother as he could inside, avoiding the snow the best he can. He feels hollow as his phalanges wrap around the side of the mug, holding it securely as he walks searching for his brother's crimson scarf. He hopes the 'human', the thief, that dirty brother killer, hadn't taken it like it took everything from Snowdin Shop. Papyrus loved that scarf, more than he loved spaghetti. Sans remembers the first time his little brother found it, sparkling stars in his wide eyes with one of the biggest grins Sans had ever seen on him.

After some time, he found it. Caught wrapped around the trunk of a tree and its roots was brother's bright red scarf, a striking constrast to the ashy snow, swaying and flapping in the wind. 

Sans knows what to do next. 

Chapter Text

Sans stands alone in front of his dining table in his living room, hands stuffed in his pockets, not quite sure how long he's been stood there. It feels surreal calling it only his, not "his and his bro's". Though, he supposes, they only showed up in Snowdin recently in comparison to the other monsters who had lived there. But, to him, it feels like centuries. Centuries of living with the coolest brother ever. Centuries of living with The Great Paphrus now over.

Feeling hollow, memories play and echo in his skull as he looks around; the dirty grey sock lying on the purple-blue carpet with a series of yellow sticky notes on it, the big television Papyrus insisted on keeping to only ever watch that one channel of an egotistical robot who Sans hated, the green couch with springs almost bursting out and seams torn from the nights of playfully sparring while bouncing up and down.

There's a glaring abyss in his chest pulsing, crackling as bits and pieces break off and topple down and down and down, where grief and hurt and sadness all should be. It flares as he looks back at the crimson scarf, which he had carefully unwrapped from the tree with great care before heading home, that he had set on the table with the mug to its right. 

Something feels off. Not the noticeable off with red flags thrashing and alarms blaring, but the blink and you miss it off. The specific type of off that you'd miss if you didn't pay close enough attention. Maybe off is the wrong word, maybe it isn't, but the humans in their books say 'deja vu' are the among the right ones. This whole scene, seeing Papyrus' grey dust inside a mug next to the scarf he loved, is familiar when it has absolutely zero right to be, not a single one. Another reset had occurred, he supposed, which oddly made things feel easier him as he begins to speak. 

"lookin' pretty pale there, bro. heh," He chuckled, then lets out a resigned sigh. "never really got the fuss about these, but s'pose you'd want one..." 

Sans gentle lifts the mug and peers inside, after his eyesockets observed each and every line of yellow crayon that formed the sketch of a boisterous Papyrus. He looks at all the individual particles of dust he can identify among the melting white snow. "snow way i'm the best funeral director but at least i'm deadly serious."

"so... guess this is the part where talk ages, huh?" He holds it closer to himself, closer to his breastbone, and feels his soul thump, thump, thump. Sans feels heavy, weighed down by a force that only grew in strength. Knowing he's already lived this moment, while hastily pushing away the thought of reliving it, he feels a crushing weight on his shoulders. He continues. "welp. too lazy for a big speech. you know me. i'm a lazybones. so, uh, in short... i feel real bonely without you." 

"and i always admired your dead-ication in life. it ghosts without saying, but i loved you, bro." His words are tinged with nonchalance and the faintest touch of guilt for not feeling more guilt, but, above of all else, complete and total apathy. There is simply nothing inside of him that can care anymore, he's so exhausted, but he knows he has no choice but to bring himself to care with what's looming over his head.

There's a long pause. He'll do that later.

For now, Sans wonders if he's already said everything he has before but he comes back to the same old conclusion he always does. It doesn't matter, nothing does, nothing ever has. Even doing this for his brother, who he knows would've wanted this or something like this but fancier at least, doesn't matter in the slightest. Why is he doing this if he knows he's done it before? Why do this at all? Is there really any real point to this, if not meaning? Or is he merely filling in time while his KR builds, while monster after monster is slaughtered, for the inevitable? And selfishly, cowardly- "ok."

"icy you're cold, so..." He tips the contents of the mug over the scarf and watches. Most of brother's dust pours out, some is glued to the bottom thanks to the old snow. It looks like sand, like an animated picture scene from some anime Alphys had posted on the UnderNet, like... He can't think of anymore, too tired to keep distracting himself with terrible comparisons.

It doesn't feel real. Nothing evers does, really. Maybe everything isn't. He guesses this should feel much, much more monumental than it does. Maybe it did the first time, or the second time, whenever that was. Some droplets of water land on what was once Papyrus' scarf, forming dark blotches where they land of red mixed with speckles of grey.

"there you go, bro." Sans steps back a little after scraping out the inside of the mug with a finger that he wipes onto the scarf with care. With a wave of his skeletal hand, he channels his magic and his phalanges shine a beautiful blue. A glaucous light weaves through the air like liquid threads, each movement deliberate and precise yet ever so fluid, reaching and collecting each individual particule of Papyrus' dust.

The air sparkles and almost hums with an intricate but unplaceable energy. As his brother's dust is lifted and collected, forming a bright orb of greyish-blue in the air, other threads wrap themselves around the scarlet material in a hug-like manner. Glowing softly, pulsing in sync with Sans' beating soul, the orb of dust and magic floats down little by little into the scarf. The grey intertwines with the red fabric and is fully, entirely, wholly embraced in the warm hug, binding Papyrus' essence into every fiber. If only that actually meant something. It looked cool though, admits to himself.

The room, which Sans didn't notice had lit up during the process, feels darker than it was as the shadows return. 

"so. essence-tially, that's it. cool." It feels brutally anti-climatic. How many times has he done this? Is this even the last time? A familiar cold realisation lingered in the back of his head. He was nothing but a solitary actor in a neverending play, a performance with no purpose, no audience except for a LOVEthirsty thing so unrecognisable, tainted, and twisted that it can hardly be called a human anymore. It doesn't matter how many times he's done this, it doesn't even matter, Papyrus' death doesn't nothing matter, this funeral doesn't matter, the scarf doesn't matter, nothing matters.

"cya." Sans turns and leaves.