Wilted Spinach, part 6
It’s dark, and then there’s an explosion.
Word count: 4418
It’s dark, and then there’s an explosion.
It’s their own fault for thinking energy of this magnitude could be contained. In hindsight, storing magical and geothermic and temporal energy in one place was also a mistake.
Electromagnetic radiation floods the room first (which means the laws of physics are still partially in place, that’s good), closely followed by a deafening report. Next comes the heat of explosion, though the boiling temperatures could also be due to a containment breach in the volcanic reservoir. The second case would indicate this shindig is an entropic explosion, which would mean the energy is going into something other than heat, which, given the choice, Sans would really rather not contemplate.
He thinks about all these things to distract himself from the fact that there hasn’t been a force of explosion yet, why hasn’t there been a force of explosion yet what have they done—
It’s dark again, and there’s no explosion, but there is shrieking.
No, not shrieking. It’s millions upon millions of noises layered on top of each other until they splinter into discordant anarchy. Sans clamps his hands to the sides of his skull to drown out the chaos, but even then the noise won’t stop. It echoes in his head and behind his ribs and everywhere else, and he can’t hear his own scream of agony because the sheer cacophony swallows it whole. He belatedly realizes some of his pain is actually nausea due to the fact that he’s been falling this entire time (possibly endlessly, possibly even longer than that), but he can’t bear any more sensory input, can’t open his eyes to see when this fall will end and how many piece he’ll smash into from the impact with the ground and if it will kill him because if death means an end to this noise it might just be worth it—
The noise stops, and Sans' head takes up the explosion theme.
He can't see past the blinding pain, crumpling in on himself in a defensive ball on the floor to try and make a smaller target. His soul beats loudly in his ribcage, each pulse bringing another nauseating wave of pain with it. Sans can't even get a scream out because it would put too much pressure on his sound processors. Everything is absolutely agony centered behind his eye sockets, growing to fill every crevice in his skull and pushing everything out of the way—
“Sans? Are you alright?”
Everything recedes, slowly and piece by piece. The only thing the tide leaves behind are memories.
“Yeah, just got a headache.”
He examines each one, but none seem out of place. Everything is exactly the way he remembers it.
“That looked like a bad one, are you sure you're okay?”
“I'm fine,” Sans says, wiping his shaky hands on his pants. It takes another moment to pull himself up off the floor. “Guess I'm more nervous about this than I thought.”
“We don't have to call them,” Alphys says. Her lab coat is stained and lays in dirty threads around the hem. She looks haggard and run down, but that’s pretty normal for everyone these days.
Sans considers getting to his feet. Alphys takes a seat next to him on the floor and steadies him with a hand to his shoulder. “No, I want to. I need to... I don't know. This is important.”
Alphys gives him a long, hard look. She looks like she's done an unending string of things she didn't want to do and there's still more to be done, and she’ll fight like hell so no one else has to do this. “Okay.”
He picks up his phone from where he dropped it (why did he drop it again?) and scrolls through his contacts to H for Human. He pauses another moment. “I miss everyone.”
Alphys squeezes his shoulder. “Me too.”
Sans hands the phone over to the Queen.
Alphys talks for a while. She talks about how much she hates what happened, but how much stronger she's become because of it. She talks about Undyne's last words that gave her the strength to do the right thing. She talks about how human panic is at an all-time high. Sans listens and remembers his life before the human fell into the underground. He can barely remember a time where he didn't have to check his logs for irregularities every time something changed. He misses thinking that time was linear. He misses Undyne, and Toriel, and even Mettaton.
“Just daydreaming here, but.”
Most of all, he misses Papyr—
“I really should have killed you when I had the chance.
Sans head splits open and the universe starts screaming again.
The floor is gone, gravity is gone, the laws of physics seem to have been pitched out the window, and Sans can't feel anything beyond the sense that he's being pitchedaround in space. He can't remember where he was a moment ago, but he suddenly remembers the core, the explosion, oh hell everyone who was caught in the explosion oh god. He throws both arms over his head in an effort to block the pain or the memories or anything out—
—and slams into a vertical surface. Friction pins Sans in place for a moment before gravity takes hold and he slides gracelessly down the length of the wall. It makes a wet noise, followed by the sound of a short skeleton hitting a hardwood floor.
He's hit with a piercing headache. It's not as bad as he's expecting (has he had one like this before?), but the relentless pressure building in his skull is still enough to make Sans curl up on the floor. It blanks out the world around him for a few long seconds. The pain recedes, leaving things... right?
Sans hauls himself to his feet and finds himself stage left on an official looking set that’s dominated by a large desk and backdrop. The backdrop is painted like a large window overlooking New Home, which now has a long smudge down one side from Sans’ impact with the wet paint. Sure enough, a matching painted mess is smeared down the back of Sans’ blazer, and he can feel the painted hand prints on his skull from his... why was he on the floor?
“Sans!”
Sans looks up with more relief than he’s ever felt in his life, because storming across the stage towards him is Papyrus. He’s wearing a blazer that matches Sans’, minus the paint stains, and looks absolutely livid. Sans frowns at himself. Why does he feel so relieved? Where else would Papyrus be?
“Where have you been?! The pre-staff meeting is in ten minutes and we still need to go over the scene changes for this afternoon, yet here you are just standing around— what have you done to the news set?!”
“Uh,” says Sans.
He wipes his paint-smeared hands on his jacket as Papyrus raves about more work and even further behind schedule and the king will be so upset! Sans sheds the blazer and wads it up to minimize paint contamination.
“So,” he says, twisting the fabric to keep his hands occupied. Maybe he's not over the damage the human caused after all, because he’s pretty concerned about Papyrus. Who is standing right there in front of him get it together, Sans. “You look pretty… lively.”
“Oh, well thank you for noticing Sans. I’m often quite lively when I’m annoyed!”
“Right, of course. Sorry about the mess, I’ll fix it.”
Papyrus fixes him with a glare. “With your artistic abilities, you’d just make it worse. I’ll have to call that guy who apologizes all the time, and you know Mettaton makes him nervous.”
Sans wanders to the official looking news desk and shoves his ruined blazer in the drawer. “I'll call Sorry about the set, you go ahead to the meeting. You've got a good handle on the scene edits.”
“Wait,” Papyrus says, catching Sans' arm as he dials his phone, “You need another jacket. Mettaton's been clear about the staff dress code.”
“King MTT has more important things to worry about than what we wear,” Sans replies.
Papyrus doesn't let go of his hand.
Sans remembers countless nights spent watching Papyrus' favorite actor on TV and sighs. “Alright, I'll go find something in costumes.”
Papyrus' relief is worth the extra work. Sans pulls out his phone to text Sorry while he walks to the props cage, but his vision swims for a moment and he's already in the room.
“...huh,” he says to himself.
Sans finishes the text in the hallway, then sneaks into the room and rummages around in the old costumes until he finds a formal blazer. The sleeves only need to be rolled up twice for him to wear it, so he grabs it and shrugs it on.
He's just leaving the room when an extendable arm blocks his path.
“Sans,” Mettaton says in a voice that's both playful and admonishing, “Didn't the staff meeting start thirty seconds ago?”
Mettaton is wearing the ridiculous crown and cape that mark him as king. They're made of gold and fake fur and obscenely soft velvet.
“I got my jacket messy and needed another one. No need to break the dress code, right?”
“Sans the Skeleton abiding by company policy? I thought I'd never see the day!” Mettaton slings an arm over Sans' shoulder and starts down the hallway, forcing them to walk together. “It's just as well I caught you, I wanted to talk about something.”
Sans shrugs and lets Mettaton steer him through the facility and down the fire stairs to the basement. All the rooms and both sides of the hall are lined with discarded old props and costume mannequins past their prime, giving the area a creepy, abandoned feeling. Sans resists the urge to lighten the mood by tipping over one of the many stray mannequins.
They finally come to an undecorated door. Mettaton shoves it open to reveal his lavishly decorated secret parlor, complete with hot pink damask wallpaper and a ridiculous crystal chandelier. It the room he uses when he needs to get away from work, or talk about things it would be dangerous for monster civilians to overhear.
“I don't have time to give you a tune-up right now,” Sans says as Mettaton collapses dramatically over his pink and gold loveseat.
“You have a minute to listen to me complain.” Mettaton says, patting the seat next to him.
Sans’ mouth twists fondly. He hops up onto the couch. “So, you gonna throw me in irons for breaking the royal dress code?”
Mettaton crosses his arms. It makes the cape fall over his shoulders in a way that suggests regal disappointment. “The laws are clear. You should be executed for this.”
“But you're not going to do that.”
He sighs. “I should. I shouldn't let you get away with this just because you and your brother are my favorites. The Underground is in enough chaos without the king throwing his weight around.”
“You're doing just fine,” Sans says gently.
“Of course I am,” Mettaton replies, uncrossing his arms to wave one hand dismissively. “But fine is all I'm doing. Everyone is still rattled, and the best I can do is play Big Brother for them until we figure out some kind of real ruling government. I'm an entertainer, Sans, not a politician.”
“Some might say they're the same thing.”
“Now I remember why I hired you for standup,” Mettaton says with an eye roll. He sits up, stretches his back, then drapes himself over Sans' legs. “Tell me more, Royal Jester.”
“Thought you liked Paps' jokes better,” Sans replies. Some part of him is surprised at how normal it feels to have the Underground's top celebrity-turned-leader laying on him.
“They're less cringey than yours, but...”
Sans waits while Mettaton threads their fingers together.
“It's been months since the human. How long to you plan to keep lying to him?”
His hand looks small in Mettaton's, but to be fair, Sans’ hand would look small next to anyone's. “How do you think I should tell him everyone is dead?”
“Sans.”
Sans sighs heavily. “Sorry. It's just— it would kill him. He was friends with the kid, you know? They wiped out everything from the ruins to the capital and then killed the king.”
“He's not a child, Sans.” Mettaton straightens the collar of Sans' shirt. “You can't keep coddling him like this. It's not fair to either of you.”
“I know, I know.” Sans looks away from Mettaton's face and squeezes his hand. He suspects the hand-holding isn't always for Mettaton's benefit. “It's... tough. I don't want him to hurt, ever.”
“It was quick,” says Undyne.
Sans glares at her. “Does that make you feel any better?”
She sighs heavily and leans back against the ugly old couch. “No, it doesn't. It makes me fucking furious.”
They fall silent. One of Mettaton's news shows chatters on in the background. Sans isn't sure if hearing Papyrus' favorite actor is better or worse than the all-consuming silence that's taken over the house. He and Undyne have started hanging out in the evenings, and the house has become a safe haven from Undyne's responsibilities as ruler of the Underground. On the clock, she's a pissed off human hating military woman; off the clock, she's still pissed off, but doesn't have to be so aggressive about it.
Sans kneads his temple when a headache starts up. They've been getting worse since the human blew through the Underground. He suspects some kind of temporal shenanigans have been going on.
“What I don't get is why you don't do something about this,” Undyne says without taking her eyes from the TV. She sounds worn down and tired.
He rolls his eyes and attacks the dirty dishes with a vengeance. The ladder to the sink is outrageously tall, but leaving the dishes seems like an insult to Papyrus' memory somehow. “What am I supposed to do?”
“I've seen you use some kind of transportation magic,” she says, flipping idly through the channels, “And I've read the reports on the determination experiments. Have you ever even tried to cross the barrier?”
“We're not talking about this,” he says bitterly. The dishes are good enough, so he magicks them to the lower counter and begins the trek back down the ladder.
“Think about it, though. If anyone can get out of here and get the souls, it’d be you.”
“Did you actually read the reports? Even if I kept it together well enough to make it past the barrier, there's no way I could find six souls before melting.”
“You've never tried,” Undyne says again.
Sans stomps over to the couch. He snatches the remote from Undyne's hand and mutes the TV. “Do you really think I haven't considered it? I've done that math: if we spend the next ten years synthesizing determination, I'd still have twenty-to-one odds of getting through the barrier. Factor in my small mass and even smaller density, and I would be a skeleton puddle within thirty-five minutes of injection. It isn't possible.”
Undyne jumps to her feet and throws her arms out. “So we spend the next twenty years synthesizing determination. Or thirty, or fifty, or a hundred! Why are you so against this?!”
“Because it's not going to fix anything!”
“It's going to get us out of the Underground!”
“Yeah, and then what? Do you have any idea how many humans there are on the surface?! One human child completely decimated the monster population, and there are billions of them up there.”
“We have to try!” Undyne cries, kicking the couch for emphasis. It shoots across the room and slams halfway through the wall with a nasty crunch. They watch as a crack forms above the point of impact and creeps a foot up the wall.
Sans and Undyne make eye contact. Tonight wasn't supposed to be about fighting. They wordlessly sit on the floor where the couch used to be.
“I'll fix that,” Undyne mutters.
“It's fine,” Sans says, unmuting the TV.
They watch one of Mettaton's musicals. Apparently the TV producers were all killed in the incident, so he does whatever he wants now.
“One more thing, and then I'm done,” Undyne says.
“Would you honestly stop if I asked you to?”
“We're rotting away down here, Sans. Even if going to the surface means the end of monsterkind, don't you think it'd be better than just giving up and waiting to die?”
Sans watches Mettaton traipse about the stage in a low-cut dress. “Guys like me don't make decisions like that.”
But I value your opinions.
Shrieking static fills Sans' head. The world cracks in half and shatters like it's nothing but one huge pane of glass. Sans can see through the pieces into other worlds (other times?), and between those, the inky blackness of nothing. He slips between the pieces of this world into the nothing, doesn't fight it this time because now he remembers this and, honestly, he's running out of panic.
This time, though, he can just make out a speck of something in the distance. He looks at it as he falls past, and can almost make out a familiar set of mismatched eyes—
-
This time, the headache doesn't let up. Memories of all the timelines he's been thrown into crowd Sans' brain, pressing out to the very limits of his skull — Undyne in her full knight regalia, promising to bring war to the humans that had cost the Underground so much ; Alphys pouring over reports as she charts her new policies, a picture of Undyne set at the corner of her desk ; a small dog sitting on the throne? ; Mettaton standing at the head of a meeting table, demanding a more dramatic script to distract the population from how small it's become— Sans doubles over, trying to scrub the afterimages from his eyes, and blindly reaches out past the memories for something to hold on to.
His fingers find a surface. The tactile feeling overrides some of the visuals crashing around in his brain. Sans latches on. The surface is smooth and cold, stretching out farther than his trembling hands can reach. He slides both hands back towards himself until he finds an edge, connecting the horizontal surface to a vertical one. The edge connecting them feels finely beveled. Further down the vertical edge are a series of simple carvings, and a slight indentation that separates a rectangular pane from the rest of the space. Towards the center of the rectangle is a small spherical shape.
Ah. This is a drawer. He's sitting at a desk.
The excess memory strands crack into jagged pieces, but these also break under the strain of reality, leaving one set of memories behind. The desk is well crafted and utilitarian, designed for function over details. It used to belong to one of the dozens of royal advisers tasked with learning the minutiae of the kingdom. The goal was to run the Underground as efficiently as possible, and the number of people dedicated to the project was large enough to populate a small town. Now, it's been reduced to just two.
Sans eyes the mountain range of paperwork covering his desk. It's designed to look like utter chaos (partly because that’s how he likes it, partly because it drives everyone else crazy, and partly because he likes being able to pretend things haven't changed), but the underlying organization means he does know where everything is. Guys like him might not be cut out to run a kingdom, but at he can handle the bureaucratic side of things just fine.
He passes the next ten minutes choosing which reports most urgently need the royal signature. The king's position is more about boosting citizen morale these days, meaning the paperwork needs to be severely streamlined.
Better get it over with.
He straightens his faded blue jacket. Sans' official uniform is a purple robe hemmed down from someone approximately Toriel's-- (Toriel driven from the throne by a furious, grieving mob) approximately the former queen's height, but he throws his blue hoodie on the moment the front doors close. Tonight is predictably quiet, since they’re down to a skeleton staff after what the remaining monster population is calling The Cull. The corridors are barely lit by candlelight. Sans takes a candle from the wall to light his path and makes his way to the throne room.
The ornate doors are ajar. No noise comes from inside. Sans taps on the door.
A startled noise comes from inside. “Yes, come in,” says Papyrus.
“Business hours are over, kiddo,” Sans says, slipping through the doors and easing them shut behind him. “Just me.”
Papyrus leans back. He's wearing a toned-down version of the king's regalia. Slumped down in the throne, the clothing doesn't look like it fits. “Oh, thank goodness. I don’t know if I could have handled another citizen today.”
“Relax, bro, everybody’s gone home for the night.” Sans crosses the flowery garden to the throne that sits in the middle of the room.
“More paperwork?” Papyrus asks, eyeing the stack of papers under Sans’ arm. The room is dimly lit by five standing candelabras: two by the main entrance, two by the exit, and one next to the throne on the raised central platform. Electricity seems wasteful in these low-resource times.
“Yeah. They just need your signature.”
“Can’t you sign them?”
Sans hops up on the arm of the throne. “Never thought I’d see you being lazy,” he teases.
“I am not lazy,” Papyrus says indignantly. It sounds so much like something he’d say before The Cull that Sans has to grin, but a moment later he back slumps down into the too-fancy chair. “I am tired.”
Sans plucks the crown off Papyrus’ head and hangs it on the back of the throne. It’s just for a moment, but it’s a moment Papyrus doesn’t have to carry the weight of the kingdom.
Papyrus leans into Sans’ side and wraps both arms around him. Sans, in an unusual position of height over his brother, hugs him back. The sit in the abandoned throne room as the candles gutter around them.
“Why did everyone leave?” Papyrus asks.
"I know you're trying to be kind here, but how much of this is really for Papyrus?" Mettaton asks from where he's sprawled over Sans' legs.
Sans sighs heavily, massaging his temple with his unoccupied hand. "You know, if it were anyone else asking that, I'd be kind of insulted."
"It's the right question and you know it." Mettaton holds Sans’ hand in both of his and curiously examines the small bones. He’s doing it so they don't have to maintain eye contact. He's considerate like that. "Of course you want to protect him, but doesn't Papyrus thinks all his friends have abandoned him? That's not kind."
"And he wanted to make everyone happy," says Undyne, sprawled across the floor as Mettaton twirls on TV, "Don't you think he would have wanted you to try?"
A small white dog sits on the throne. It makes a borking noise that the royal aids scramble to interpret. How the hell did it come to this?
"He would have wanted to be alive," Sans snarls back. The timeline whiplash is making his head hurt and he's not feeling magnanimous. "Don't you think Alphys would have wanted to be alive?"
"Too far," Alphys mutters, penciling a report in near darkness, "We can't stretch our resources this thin. Snowdin is simply too far away to send supplies, the residents are going to have to come here."
"They won't want to leave their homes," Sans says.
I value your opinion.
"This is their home now," she says firmly. "It's simple: either they move here with the rest of the population, or they have to fend for themselves."
Sans stacks Alphys' used coffee cups and sets a fresh one on the desk. "Speaking of surviving in the wild, when was the last time you slept?"
She gives him a look that silently points out the fact that Alphys is running a kingdom here, while also flicking over Sans' rumpled clothing and the half empty coffee cup he's kept for himself. It's a very pointed look.
"I'm just the office grunt," Sans replies. "The monarch, on the other hand, needs to get some rest."
Papyrus makes a sad noise against his side. Sans tries to shake the afterimages out of his head without dislodging him. “I don't have time to rest. I'm the king now."
I value—
Sans coughs and holds his ribs together with one hand. Shouldn’t have known napping would be the end of him—
Sans squeezes his eyes shut to focus past the sound of a thousand disembodied voices murmuring behind a cracking glass panel. “Paps, I want you to know that I’m proud of you. You’re doing great.”
Papyrus looks up at him. He looks confused. “I know.”
“Just, remember that for me, okay?”
“Okay,” say Alphys and Mettaton and Undyne and the small dog, clearly confused about the direction this conversation is taking.
“No, not you—” He glares into the blend of memories until he finds Papyrus again. “Don’t give up. Don’t fall down.”
“Are you alright?”
Sans holds Papyrus tight. “Yeah, yeah. Just give it a minute and everything will be fine.”
The screaming void opens up and swallows him whole.
-
Sans wakes up in a bed. He pulls the blanket over his eyes and waits for the memories to push through the headache, but when several painful minutes pass with no new information or reprieve, he risks a peak.
The room beyond the bed spins slowly. Sans can see a second bed with no covers. The room is unnaturally neat, like someone has exactly half of it. It’s his room. This is his bed, which means the empty bed belongs to—
Sans prods through his current set of memories, but they’re incomplete and muddled with the other sets. He isn’t sure who’s still alive, and can’t definitively remember anything past the explosion—
The explosion.
Sans glances at the blueprint pinned to the wall. He’d pinched it from the garbage out of nostalgia. It’s the first generation design for a central energy generator, designed to power the entire Underground for the foreseeable future. It’s also what started all this.
He lurches out of bed.
Author’s note: thank you so much for the support everyone! I was sure how the new formatting would be received, and I’m so glad you guys like it :D
--Yoo
- Wilted Spinach - PART 6
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