Undertale - Reprise Part 3

Frisk hadn’t been looking forward to dinner with Sans, for a variety of reasons.

The cabaret act was awful, for starters. Weak piano accompaniment to a bunch of jokes you were guaranteed to have heard before even if you hadn’t looped the timeline repeatedly.

Then there was the food. Monster food was nice for a snack, but for humans, you eventually started to crave something that didn’t immediately dissipate into energy upon hitting your stomach. Call it an old habit, dying hard.

Plus, if Sans had figured it out, if Frisk had slipped up somewhere…

It was unlikely that he’d be pleased about Frisk’s actions, to put it lightly.

Sans had paused for a moment, halfway through his story about the door in the forest, taking a moment to collect his thoughts and appreciate the bad show going on up on stage. In a little while, Frisk would receive Sans’s friendly death threat, and then it would be time to push on into the CORE. Right on schedule.

“...one day, though, I noticed she wasn’t laughing very much. I asked her what was up. Then she told me something strange.”

Sans shifted forward in his seat, looking a little more intently at Frisk. Frisk did their best to look attentive and intrigued.

“She said, ‘If a human ever comes through this door… could you please, please promise me something?’ Now, I hate making promises. And this woman, I don’t even know her name. But what she asked me to promise to do...”

Sans scrutinised Frisk. Shade covered his eyes, and out of nowhere, his voice was like ice.

“She asked me to forgive them.”

Uh oh. That was new. Frisk didn’t have to feign shock, this time.

“Now, I thought that was pretty unusual. Specific, even. And then, whaddya know, along you come, and what could I possibly need to forgive you for?”

Sans leant back, dropping into his normal, relaxed tone of voice. Frisk’s heart started beating again, and they couldn’t help but give a small relieved sigh.

“I mean, I like you, kiddo. I’ve got a good feeling about you, in my bones. And feelings like that, they’re usually right, I’ve found. Not only that, but I’ve been watching you, and you’re kind, smart, resourceful, and merciful.”

Sans reached into the dark depths of a hoodie pocket, and produced a small remote of some kind, with a row of lights on it, and placed it on the table. One was lit, glowing with a steady blue light, and the rest were dark.

“That’s why it’s such a shame that I don’t quite believe it.”

Frisk was most of the way out of the chair, ready to dive for cover, when Sans raised a bony hand. “Relax, kiddo. You’re the genuine article, I don’t doubt that. I ain’t gonna hurtcha.”

“Sans…” Frisk hadn’t wanted to interrupt, but it was clear that this conversation was going all the way off script no matter what they did. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sans chuckled. “You oughta be an actor, kid. Even now, you’re doing a terrific job.” He pointed to the device on the table. “If it wasn’t for that lady’s tipoff, and this, I’d have never noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

Frisk eased themselves back into the chair with no small amount of trepidation. “...so, what is that?”

“This here is just an indicator. It’s my own little personal, 12 volt battery powered hell. These little lights here light up when the machine it’s linked to detects some kind of temporal activity.”

Sans picked it up and tossed it lightly into the air with one hand, catching it again and grinning at it.

“I hate this thing. ...I used to wake up in a cold sweat every morning and check this, wondering if this was the morning where someone had Reset and erased my entire life back to that point. Like a little alarm clock that only existed to remind you that at any moment, your life and everything you’ve worked for can be taken away, and the little glowing light is the only thing you have to show for it. Eventually, I couldn’t stand it, so I locked it away, along with everything else I’d done to research this… But I had to know, after that lady gave me the heads up.”

Sans put the device back on the table and spun it around, so that it was facing Frisk.

“But you wanna know what the real skull-scratcher was? I don’t remember you at all, and I put a lot of time and effort into learning how to remember things. All I got is a kinda vague sense of deja-vu. Not only that, but this says there was only a single reset. Unknown origin time, outside of range. And that never happens. Ever. Resets come in threes, fives, fifties. Multiple tries, until an ideal timeline is reached by trial and error. But you… You’ve had a plan from the moment you walked out of that door.”

Sans hunched back again, threading his hands into his pockets. “Nothing’s phased you, or even slowed you down. You’ve got something in your pockets for every problem you encounter, you know just what to say to every monster you meet, and like I said, your acting has been superb. That amount of familiarity, I’d be able to accept that if you’d reset dozens of times, trying to get everything exactly right, but you already know exactly how you want things to go. So. Why are you back here?”

Frisk opened their mouth, thought about it, and then closed it again.

“Nothing to say, huh? Well, I have a theory, if you care to listen. If I died of old age, wherever you’re from, there’d be no memories to bring back when you reset the timeline. A nice, clean slate for you. But that lady, she knows you, somehow. And she saw your timeline to the end. And whatever you spent all that time planning, she wants me to forgive you for it. And now you’re here, despite the fact that you already know everything this timeline has to offer, to try something new. And you took away everyone’s future in order to try it.”

Frisk couldn’t even look Sans in the eye. It was true.

“Is what you’re trying to do… really worth it?”

“...Yes.”

Frisk took a moment to realise that this time it was their own voice. They blinked in surprise, and looked up at Sans. He chuckled, pushing his chair back with a foot and getting up, taking a few steps and stretching.

“Well, that’s all I really needed to know. It’s not like I can stop you from trying whatever it is you’re doing, anyway. That’s all for now. Take care of yourself, kid. ‘cause someone… ah, you probably already know. Don’t waste this chance, ok?”

He didn’t wait for a reply before shuffling off into the dimly lit recesses of the restaurant. The exit was in the other direction, but Frisk knew that wouldn’t be a problem for him.

Frisk breathed a heavy sigh of relief this time, leaning heavily on the dinner table. The food had gone cold, much like Frisk’s blood. Really, they’d gotten lucky this time. It was unlikely that Sans would be in such a forgiving mood if this took more than one try. This aversion of his to Resets apparently went much deeper than Sans, uh, that is to say, Old Sans from before, had ever let on. Sheesh, time travel was hard to keep straight in your head sometimes.

Frisk took two deep, steadying breaths. One, to calm their nerves and focus their determination. The other, in response to the realization that Sans had left Frisk the bill.