Home Away From Home

Papyrus briskly exits his home and places the full box in his hands on the ground with a thud.

The sound ringing with an air of finality in his non-existent ears.

He straightens, brushes off his hands, and slowly and appraisingly scans the assortment of cardboard boxes of varying sizes and contents that had accumulated outside of his home. Or, he guesses now ,what used to be his home.

He quickly takes out his list to distract himself.

A suitcase full of his clothes, action figures, and books.

Check.

Four boxes filled with the most basic and crucial necessities such as Bone Cologne, Beauty Yogurt, Attraction Slime, etc. It was imperative that one lather the skin (or lack thereof) and behind the ears (or lack thereof) every night to maintain a lustrous, friend-attracting sheen!

Check.

His pet rock's filtered and colorfully decorated tank with said rock safely inside. Sans had brought him a tank for their pet upon his request as he felt it may lessen the stress of the move for it. 3 out of 4 rocks prefer that you move them, but Papyrus isn't quite sure what his rock's stance is on the matter so he's trying to make its environment as comfy as possible just to be safe.

Check.

2 gallon jugs of spaghetti sauce. New places means new friend making potential! So of course, he's readied himself with the ingredients to whip out a plate of spag for every lucky citizen of this new town. He thinks about this and chuckles smugly to himself. What a pleasant surprise this blissfully unsuspecting town was in for!

Check.

And of course the remaining 20+ boxes filled with bones. He didn't even need to check those. He wasn't a naive fool, of course he wouldn't leave any valuables behind.

Check.

That should do it, he thinks to himself with a satisfied nod. Everything was here and in place as it should be. Except for Sans that is. He swivels his head in all directions searching for the other skeleton. He groans. Late as usual, too late to do any of the work himself as usual usual. Though, if he's being honest, he should probably be relieved that Sans didn't help him pack. He knows it would have been an unorganized chaotic mess that would have been annoying and possibly hazardous to his safety to unpack if the trash tornado in his room was any premonitory.

How lamentable though, that he must do everything himself. He sighs to himself and takes out his keys, striding up to the front door he locks it shut. And he realizes that it is almost certainly the last time he will ever hear that familiar click.

It makes him pause.

He pauses for the first time since the moving preparations started. He had kept himself so busy, busy, busy the past few days. Busy with cleaning up and putting things away and prepping the rock's tank and getting after Sans for not doing what he should be doing and then doing what Sans should be doing in his place. And he never rested or thought about what his actions really meant, he never let himself dwell on what it was all leading up to which was, to put it simply, leaving the only home he had ever known.

He stepped back and looked up at the old, sturdy building. It looked so hollow now with the Christmas lights removed, no wreath on the door, and the skull and crossbones flag taken down. The only thing left adorning it being the blanket of snow that never melts away completely (he doesn't think he's ever seen the roof beneath now that he thinks about it).

Though it is a shell of itself, little things here and there remain, an unremovable proof that they were there. Like the dent in the storm drain from when Papyrus' foot slipped off the latter while he was putting up the lights so he hung on to that drain for dear life, wailing at Sans for a good ten minutes to help him down while his brother stood there and made dumb 'sorry to leave you hanging' jokes the whole time. As Sans became more amused, Papyrus became more infuriated and desperate and then he fell...