Chapter Text
It was foggy. I never felt this way before. It felt like everything was wrong, changed, different. It was strange. My mind never felt this faint. It was like it was running on a different hardware.
I slowly opened my eyes. This too felt different. Llike my eyelids themselves were heavier and more solid? I don’t know how to exactly describe what this is like. To be certain something is wrong with me, yet I’m still unable to comprehend what it is.
It was a while before I was aware enough to grasp the new thing that was Me. The world still looked grey and distant like seeing the world through eyes that haven’t adapted yet. I finally noticed another change in my world. I was not where I was supposed to be. I was not in my home. I was not lying on my bed rotting while sick, I was not with my family.
That is what finally shocked my brain enough to start thinking properly again. As quickly as possible I went to find a weapon to defend myself. That plan quickly fell apart. As soon as I leapt off the bed I did not realize the ground was a lot further away than it should have been.
‘But the bed has always been this high?’
I let out a sharp wheeze as I smashed into the ground hard on my chest. Try as I might, my body felt much weaker than yesterday? Then I noticed something while trying to pick myself up. I saw my “hands” skeletal claws that were only supposed to be seen on the dead.
The first thought that passed through my mind was wild uncontrolled panic ‘What use do traffickers have for hand meat and skin?!’ However, as my breath hitched and rose I realized something ‘It doesn't hurt?’ I could still move them, I could still close them, still feel them!
‘Just focus already you have a Job!’
The longer I marveled at my body the more I realized the rest of me was the same. My arms, my legs, my chest, everything was bone. As I looked down I saw a heart, my Soul, a beautiful deep blue heart that was upside down and with vinelike patterns of green and blue going through it. I don’t know how I knew what it was, it just was there was no possible explanation beside it was my Soul.
“Am I In Undertale?” This is Crazy how could this be happening? How did this happen? Did I die? I just had a fever?! “I can’t be dead! This has to be a dream or a fever dream or something!” Did I get reincarnated? That so dumb!
“Please don’t be Handplates? Please?. I’m in the secret lab for god’s sake! I really don’t want to be tortured!”
I don’t know how long I sat there just spaced out and exploring my body while denying it at the same time. Everything was just too sudden. I didn't have anything to ground me, nothing to pull me back down as I delved deeper into my mind in a panic.
I tried to find something familiar with my body to remind me of my past life, my phalanges were shorter and for no better terms fatter. I was so different, so much smaller, so much frailer than before, I felt pathetic in this body. My breathing kept picking up pace. My soul was beating faster and faster as I kept spiraling. It all stopped when I finally saw my reflection inside the polished metal of the bed, a stark white face of stiff bone that somehow held soft curves and baby fat. What stole my breath away from me was not my face but my eyes (or eye lights?) a stark grey color that also held green and blue inside just like my last life a grey that could be green or blue from where you looked at it.
“Snap out of it! I’m fading the longer you stay here! I already failed to absorb the DT I won’t fade P-1 hurry up and Find Him!”
It jolted me, a scream from my own mind, a reprimand from a part of me that I couldn’t acknowledge. If I did I knew next I would have to accept that I wasn’t Me anymore. I was more. I was changed. No matter my refusal, my actions stayed the course that he wanted. I stood up and started moving.
I was moving like I knew where to go. I didn’t know where I was going. I was going to P-1’s Room. That’s a cage not a room. ‘What is happening to me?’ ‘I’m going to check on P-1’.
The answer felt like me? It felt normal, it felt like it came from me. But it did not feel like the me from yesterday. It didn’t even feel like the me from ten minutes ago. Still, it was everything I was. I knew I cared about him. I knew this in the way I knew I was human yesterday, yet the longer I exist here the more I realize I am now/was also a monster for the past six years. I was more than who I was yesterday and I felt more in tune to myself than ever. I’m not only myself now.
I continued walking forward as my mind spun around in a loop. I moved with a purpose that felt burned into my soul, I moved towards him. I was outside his Room/Cage and I couldn't open the door.
‘What are we?’
‘What does that matter?’ ‘We need to check on him!’
‘It matters because I think it should! It Matters because my Soul is different! Something I’ve never noticed yet is wrong!’ ‘It matters because I can feel you fading and I’m feeling more! It matters because you are six years old and dying while I was 19 and now I am taking your place!’
‘What Matters isn’t your guilt’ What Matters is not you.’ What Matters is if P-1 Is Safe’
Open. The. Door.
‘….okay.’
I put my skeletal hands on the handle, my skeletal hands trembled against the cold handle. Beyond this door would confirm it, beyond this door I will be confined to a plot I could not control.
P-1 was there, a tiny skeletal monster like me. He was thinner and lankier yet so much smaller than me. He was asleep lying on his bed just breathing deeply, tossing and turning because [][][][][][] didn’t care if we slept cold. He did not care if P-1 No Papyrus he did not care if Papyrus had nightmares every night, did not care if he was getting so thin that the needles sometimes poked straight through his thinner bones now.
Papyrus was perfect the moment I saw him in his tube. He was charming when I saw him in my game. He is my family now as I see him for the First/Last time. I didn’t know the word before now yet it feels so right. Papyrus is family papyrus is a name P-1 is a label and he is perfect.
He is Perfect. I'm glad you came [][][][]. I feel you will show him more than I could.
His fading was speeding up now that he knew papyrus would be safe he knew I would care for him. That I would raise him like family, that I would love him.
“I’m sorry Sans.”
Take care of him, will you? Big Brother?
‘Of course I will.’
My eyes fill with deep blue tears as I sit over the baby bones in front of me. Morning the child that existed to my mind for moments yet lived for years that my soul knew. I cried for I don’t know how long before I calmed down and rested next to Papyrus sleeping soundly.
“I hope I’m what he needs for the future.”
I really wanted to be here for him to be the brother he needed. Sans was fading so fast and I knew deep down that he would not last to see Papyrsus open his eyes. Being a monster was something wonderful and I knew I truly knew that I would grow more than I ever could as a human. I could feel my soul. I could feel it send me warmth and comfort as it tried to guide me to Hope. To be Kind, To be nothing more than Myself.
If being a monster was like this and my new life took this away from sans I’m not sure how I should feel. I know sans wants me to be here to raise him. I know I can do this. I know I don’t want sans to struggle to raise himself and Papyrus. I still can’t accept that this was the only way. I don’t know why I’m here taking his place but I can only accept this.
“I don’t even like sans that much! Why am I crying? His name didn’t even sound nice.”
“I wish I could remember my Name.”
Curled up next to Papyrus and his cot I cry trying to hold onto the grey memories of my last life trying to find the faces of my parents and siblings as they once again slip from my hands.