UnderCorrupt

10 ~ Papyrus is Brave

It had been a year since Papyrus had gotten his brother back. An entire year since the first time Sans had called Papyrus a naive idiot.

He didn't do that so much anymore. He was nice. Not quite kind, he was still pretty rough and rude, but... he wasn't exactly mean anymore. There weren't so many of those cold grins, or dark glares. It was more that he was just gruff and didn't sugar-coat anything. He said what he thought, regardless of whom it might offend.

But, he wasn't intentionally cruel, and Papyrus's belief that he still was a good person inside only grew stronger. Sans was learning to love again, however slowly, and Papyrus was going to support Sans the entire way.

The first time Sans was actively helpful was a Thursday.

Being a respectable eight year old now, Papyrus was enrolled in the second grade. And he was just now moving on from the addition and subtraction part of arithmetic to the multiplication and division side of things.

He had been sent home with a worksheet of multiplication problems to complete, and, as usual, he was doing them in the lab, while Gaster toyed with whatever he was going to try on Sans next, and Sans sat on the cot in the cell.

As Papyrus had only just learned how to multiply things, it was still a little confusing for him, and a particular problem, 6 X 8, had him quite stumped. So, he voiced his frustration with the problem.

Sans looked up from whatever he had been doing with the zipper of his jacket (Papyrus's best guess was that he was improvising some sort of music. It had actually sounded kind of nice, a fast, catchy tune.) and said to Papyrus, "aw, pap, that stuff's not so hard. just think of it like... what if you had six boxes, each with eight crayons in it? how many crayons would you have?"

"Oh!" Papyrus said, thinking about crayons and crayonboxes. "That's easy! I'd have forty eight crayons!"

"aaaand there ya go." Sans nodded once, then went back to his instrumental jacket zipper.

Papyrus scribbled down the answer on his paper, then realized what had just happened.

Sans had gone out of his way unprompted, to assist Papyrus with his homework.

Quietly, Papyrus grinned to himself, proud of his brother, and continued with his homework.

~o0o~

Little did Papyrus know, Sans "help" had been a carefully calculated move. A year before he readily offered assistance. A few more months before he did again, and slowly more frequently beyond that, if his opportunity had not yet presented itself.

And it would, he was sure. There had already been several instances that had been close, where he could have almost escaped, but he had let those pass by. They were just a little too unsure to go on, and besides, he had already put this much work into it, what was a little longer with the promise of his prisoners' deaths?

It was nothing. Nothing when you took into account the reward.

The elimination of the Pure Royal Scientist, as well as his fledgling weapon.

Because yes, sweet and naive as Papyrus was, he was still built to be a weapon, and with just a few tweaks, he could be out on the warfront within several years.

So Sans would wait a bit longer, store up his Magic, and take out the pair when he escaped.

~o0o~

His opportunity did come, as he knew it would. It was a Saturday afternoon, and he had finally come up with a way to attack Gaster's suspicion of his Magic.