Ol' Fools Day (Undertale Fanfic)

You Can't

'Imagination?' Sans asked himself, confused by the child's response, but not letting his features show it.

Sans sighed shaking it off, "...whatever you say, kid." He then turned his head back to looking at the floor, his hands playing with the fabric of his shirt.

"Sans," Frisk began, "we need to talk...we can't let this get any worse than it already is..." She licked her lips, looking over at the skeleton.

"why? why should we talk.... not like any of this will even matter when you reset it all...again." Sans said, still refusing to look anywhere but the ground.

Frisk looked at him like she had just been stabbed, "I would never--"

"you say that every time!" He growled back at her, "it doesn't matter what i, or anyone does, you always reset." His voice sounded hollow and empty.

Frisk felt her soul drop to her stomach, "Sans....I...I had no idea.... I don't know why I would...." She trailed off. She still couldn't see his face, so she had no idea if he was actually believing her or not, much less, she didn't even know if he was listening to her. She sighed, and put a hand on his shoulder, hoping to grab his attention, "Sans, I promise, I won't reset this ti--"

He whipped around and grabbed her wrist roughly, " y o u ' r e   l y i n g ." The words seemed to echo right through Frisk's soul. She looked at his face, his eyes were blackened, his smile was no longer there, and had a quiver which made it look like he was about to...cry.

He froze for a moment before he slowly let go of her wrist, his eye-lights returning, "i....i don't understand.....pl-please," he begged, "...tell me why....why do you keep resetting?" His voice hitched at the end, his eye-lights wavering and rippling like a pond.

Frisk bit her lip, "Sans, I..." she looked at his face, he was begging for an answer, any answer at all, but she didn't have one, "I....I don't know why...I can't remember why..."

Sans looked at them, empty.

"Sans," Frisk began, trying to get him to believe her, "if I knew, I would tell you, I wanted to talk so why would I lie?"

"why wouldn't you is the better question," he said, his face a complex of emotions, the most prominent being betrayal.

"Sans, wha-"

"i trust you, you kill monsters. i help you, you kill my brother. i try to change you, you kill me. i believe in you, you reset. i try to protect you, you kill everyone and smile. and you wonder why i would think you'd lie to me..." he glared at them, practically seeing the sins crawling up their back, "and if you think that nothin' from the resets last, besides what i remember... hell, are you wrong."

Frisk swallowed the lump in her throat, as she looked at her feet, not daring to look at him right now, "W-what....what do you mean?" She asked, half wondering if he'd lose it or not.

Sans sighed, "imagine a piece of paper...you crumpling it up, is you creating a new timeline, every decision you make is another wrinkle added. now let's say you try to flatten the paper, that's equal to you reseting, but, no matter how much you try to flatten the paper, it will never be the same... ever."

Frisk looked towards him, connecting eyes, there was a mixture of anger and sadness in his orbs, something she wasn't used to seeing at all, "How....how many things h-have the resets a-affected?"

"mentally....not too much...except for me an' flower-boy, sometimes undyne or papyrus... sure, some other monsters might get a lot of deja-vu, but other than that, not too much... physical changes is where it's been big... some monsters have completely disappeared...well, basically any monster that you do not validate as 'important' to your journey has a chance of being wiped out of existence... think of it like...a glitch in a game," Frisk felt his eyes go through her, just like Chara's had, "and the physical damage also goes to the monsters that you've hurt, over and over again..." he trailed off in thought.

Frisk gulped nervously, "What d-does that mean?" she asked, even more terrified of him flipping on her.

She watched Sans bring his hand to his own chest, looking over at her with a half-grin, that seemed to be more of a stretched grimace, "what we get are scars." He shook his head at the child, "makes it hard to forget things even if i try. don't even know how you haven't noticed... papy has had a scar on his neck since the tenth reset, when you decided to kill my brother 6 resets in a row, just to mess with my head." He naturally lifted his hand to his neck, putting his own hand into relation of where his brother was scarred, "undyne, asgore, and mettaton all complain about insane aches in their torso or stomach when you aren't around... the scales on alph's neck seemed to have thinned out," his eyes went black, "heh...that's how i figured out why every genocide run you did, she never answered her phone..."

He swallowed the lump in his throat, that seemed to be trying to stop the words from coming from his mouth, his hands shaking from a feeling he couldn't quite grasp. He looked at Frisk, their eyes wide in horror, with tears threatening to emerge, her hands covering her mouth as she shook her head in disbelief. He took a shaky breath and continued.

"...tori's....i didn't notice until a few days ago... we were at the nicecream guy's stand, and she kept touching her cheek and making weird faces, after we got the nicecreams, i asked her what was up, and she said that she felt something weird under her fur... tori has a three inch long cavity in her cheek..." His smile faltered. "and me? let's just say i'm missing a lot of rib pieces..."He pressed into his shirt, the material falling deeper where the bone was missing, revealing a divot from his right shoulder blade, across his chest to the lower left side of his rib-cage.

Frisk looked at him, continuing to shake her head, not knowing what else to do. 'What have I done', she asked herself, 'Was it even me?'

Frisk felt so at lost, looking to Sans for any sort of cue of what she was supposed to do, but receiving none, she tried to speak, but it came out weak, " S-Sans...I didn't...I didn't... I don't remember ever killing anyone multiple times....all I can re-remember i-i-is the last r-run."

"kid, i don't know how or what to believe in anymore..." he said, rubbing the fabric on his shirt between his fingers.

"P-please," she begged, "Trust me... I-I didn't do it..."

He looked over to her, "'trust me?'," he repeated, "if i had a gold for every time you said that before killing or hurting me, i'd have more money than the royal treasury."

"H-how can I get y-you to believe me," Frisk stuttered.

Sans felt his eyes begin to mist again, as he looked at the child with pity. God did he want to be able to trust them again, he wanted to have his friend back, he wanted the little punk who accidentally called him Dad once and got so embarrassed they locked themselves in their room for a whole day.

He missed them.

He missed being able to trust people, he missed not being scared of the child every time they picked up a knife to eat their food. But that first Frisk was long, long, gone.

He gave the child an awkward smile, barely holding the tears back.

"you can't."