Ask or Dare Undertale

:::Timelines:::

WARNING, FEELZ/VERY TOUCHY SUBJECTS AHEAD
Any chapters titled like this
:::(name):::
are intermission chapters. No dares are answered, instead being saved for the chapter after, but one or two questions may be included. Asks and dares left on these chapters will also be answered in the next chapter. These chapters often provide backstory as to what happened before the book started, so read them god damn it!

Fem!Sans: (sigh) Dad?
Gaster: (turns around) Hm? Yes, what is it?
Fem!Sans: Can we talk?
Gaster: Of course.
* Gaster follows his daughter to the back of the house.
Fem!Sans: A little while ago, Mettaton tried to play a prank on Papyrus. The old "water bucket above the door" thing.
Gaster: Go on...
Fem!Sans: (nervous smiling) Wellllll, right before the water hit her... she teleported away.
Gaster: (shocked) Wait, WHAT?!
Fem!Sans: I was spying from around a doorway to see her reaction to the water and I saw her disappear in an orange flash!
Gaster: This is bad... thank you for telling me. I'll be in the lab, call me if you need to. (snaps his fingers and disappears)
Fem!Sans: (sighs, putting a hand to her head) I hope this won't turn out like last time...
* Two pieces of paper flutter in the wind. Curious, Fem!Sans catches them in the air with her magic and reads them.

WHICH NOTES WERE MISSING

Why is Papyrus knowing how to teleport a bad thing???

Fem!Sans: (sigh) I don't like talking about it... but if you insist to know...

Fem!Sans: I have several notebooks back in the little reset-resistant lab, all of them storing information about different timelines. Mostly about Frisk's actions, but also about the actions of others after they left the Underground. In some timelines, everybody was slaughtered. In others, nobody was, but we never went free. I even found a few notes that had blood on them. My blood. I wrote those notes as I was dying, after the kid beat me in Judgement Hall. The bloody notes weren't the ones that scared me, though. There were at least fifty timelines where Papyrus rose to the throne — whether by marrying in once he was old enough, or if everybody else was just dead — and different things happened in each of them. Sometimes he was the best king the Underground ever saw. Sometimes we were barely holding on. And sometimes, the entire monster kingdom spiralled into disaster.

Fem!Sans: As you might know, if someone is given too much power too suddenly, then they start to go nuts. And I mean completely insane. Papyrus, as of now, isn't the kind of person who'd lose his—uh, her marbles if they were suddenly in charge of a whole race. But in other timelines, he was. He went completely power-mad. He still had that golden heart that we all know him for having, but hiding it was a madman. Gaining so many new responsibilities at once, with the entire kingdom depending on him for survival, tore him apart and drove him to insanity. And I don't mean comedic, Mad-Hatter-esque insanity. I mean serious, mental insanity.

Fem!Sans: You name it, he probably experienced it - hallucinations, random psychotic laughing fits, rambling about the most random of subjects, and sometimes just breaking down into tears, saying he wasn't fit to be king and he couldn't handle so many things happening at once. I always managed to calm him down, and he always told me that since everyone else was gone, I was the only light he had in the world anymore. In some timelines, he found out they were dead, and that didn't help his mental state at all. The worst possible royalty timeline though, they've scarred me for life. The last time one played out was only a few resets before this one. Let's say he hadn't been doing the best, and I... (starts tearing up, pupils disappear) ...I-I had to take his place on the throne way quicker than I would have preferred...

Fem!Sans: (wipes tears away) In a lot of the timelines, Flowey became his advisor, seconded only to me. Surprisingly, he kept Paps together a lot better than I thought. He actually gives great advice. But in one timeline, we both had to suffer because of him. And it wasn't his fault... it was the monsters' fault. This was in a timeline when he married into the throne, via Undyne. When she was in a coma, he took her place temporarily on the crown. He started breaking down without her, and the survival of monsterkind was in jeopardy. The monsters couldn't take it... they overthrew the hierarchy.

Fem!Sans: When Papyrus saw the monsters coming, he demanded that we left without telling us why. Trusting him, me and Flowey both made a run for it. We made it out of the castle, and I took a shortcut to Snowdin, where we hid in the Ruins. I only knew what happened when someone else came along and told us... Chara. She had been left behind as a ghost when Frisk left the underground, and watched the whole thing unfold... (starts to cry again, looking angry) ...The monsters... they fucking murdered him. Him, and Undyne, and Alphys. They slaughtered the three of them with no fucking mercy. Doggo took the throne, and Muffet became the scientist. Me, Flowey and Chara were the only ones left who actually cared about my fallen brother, and in the end, I gave up half of my soul to Flowey so he could be Asriel again, and half to Chara so she would be alive too. I became a ghost, but they could see me. I followed them around and kept them safe, still popping back into the secret lab in Snowdin and writing in my notes every day, until the timeline reset. The three of us grew way closer than ever in that timeline, to the point where throwing Flowey in the fire was a disgusting thought to me, and I treated Asriel and Chara like my own kids.

Fem!Sans: About the notes... Papyrus found notes from a timeline where he was forced to fight a human child. He thought he only had to capture her, not kill her. When he struck her down one last time, he accidentally hit her too hard... she dropped down, and didn't get back up. He was horrified with himself for doing that. He dropped Asgore's red royal trident and just stared at the kid's dead body, looking like he was going to burst into tears and throw up and scream in fear all at the same time. They were a child, only about eight years old. Just a little girl. My theory is that she tore the notes of that timeline to shreds because she didn't want to live with the guilt that in another timeline, she killed an innocent child by accident.

Fem!Sans: How this connects to the teleporting... more often than not, in the timelines when he went mad, he figured out himself or convinced me to teach him how to teleport. He felt way more powerful, like he was invincible. That cocky foolishness got him fucking assassinated in a few timelines.

Fem!Sans: Papyrus' mental state has, surprisingly, always been more fragile than mine. For me, it's hard for things to get to me unless you pull my family into it, but for Papyrus... things get to her so fast and hit so hard, that she's learned to laugh it off like it's nothing, then just breaks down into tears even thinking about it when she's alone.

Fem!Sans: Dad knows about all this, and that's why he freaked out earlier. He's as concerned for my sister as I am. That's mostly why we're so protective of her — the smallest things can hit her harder than she lets off. That's why I don't want her to know how to teleport — being so mentally fragile, she could go mad, and last time she did, I'm pretty sure you know what happened. I never want a timeline like that to happen ever again...

Fem!Sans: ...I don't want to live in such a perfect world, only for it to be ripped away from me by my sister not being able to handle the knowledge of how powerful she is, and ending up committing suicide again.