hickumu

Characters: Sans, Papyrus, Dogamy, Dogaressa, Doggo

Setting: Underfell, after Frisk flees Snowdin, and after the events of “Line in the Snow”

Contains:

Dismemberment, hanging, implied torture, dysfunctional relationships, Papyrus getting kicked around, self-loathing thoughts

Synopsis: Frisk managed to talk Papyrus into letting them flee Snowdin, and into giving his brother another chance while he was at it. But when the skeletons return to town together, cold reality sets in – the rest of the Snowdin Guard aren’t so willing to accept that as an excuse for failure. Papyrus, however, isn’t about to let his brother go again so easily.

Best read here because fuck what tumblr does to my formatting, but also posted below.

—————————————

The dogs
were waiting for them, when they got back to the house.

Papyrus
obviously noticed them before Sans did. It was the way his brother paused for
just a second that made Sans look up again in the first place. Sure enough, he
could pick out the silhouettes in the distance, all gathered around their house
– Doggo, the Dogi, and Greater Dog. Lesser Dog was probably off losing
blackjack against itself, but that only marginally improved the situation. Even
at this distance, Sans could see something expectant
about them, in their stance and in their souls. Something predatory.

They were
Papyrus’ soldiers, of course, and he’d trained them to be vicious and
predatory. But they were only Papyrus’ soldiers because he was the head of this
division of the Royal Guard. Not only that, but he was strong enough to beat
down anyone who disagreed with the idea.

Yet
everything had changed now. Papyrus had obviously not captured the human, had
obviously not killed the human. More than that, he was carrying Sans in his
arms, and all of Snowdin knew that Papyrus normally treated his brother with
irritation and disdain. Sans had been glad to see that return of weakness out
by the river, brought out by Frisk’s kindness. But now it was as though they’d
returned to the real world, awoken from a pleasant dream. Now he could see the
consequences looming.

The
Underground was not a place where weakness thrived.

He half
expected Papyrus to come to his senses, to drop him back into the snow again.
Papyrus didn’t. “you maybe wanna put me down, bro?” Sans murmured to him, while
they were still far enough away to not be overheard. Just in case his brother
had forgotten he was carrying Sans in the first place.

“NO,” said
Papyrus, and that was that.

The dogs
looked to one another as their captain drew near, and Sans heard them barking
and yapping amongst themselves. Eventually, it was Dogaressa who was chosen to
step forward, though Dogamy was as ever at her shoulder.

“What
happened, Papyrus?” she asked. One paw was already resting on the haft of her
axe.

“THE HUMAN
ESCAPED,” said Papyrus simply.

Dogamy let
out a huff. “How? They were barely outside the gates when we realized what had
happened. And their only ally was…” He jerked a snout at Sans. “That.”

Sans heard
Papyrus grind his teeth for a moment. “IF CAPTURING A HUMAN WAS EASY, THEN WE
WOULD ALREADY BE OUT FROM UNDER THIS DAMN MOUNTAIN.”

“I don’t
understand,” said Doggo. “Where is Sans?”

“In his
dear brother’s arms,” Dogaressa sneered. “How sweet.”

Sans
realized just then why he was still
in Papyrus’ arms. He didn’t move much at the best of times. Now, like this, he
was all but invisible to one of the dogs. It was something. It was an edge. He
didn’t know if it would be enough.

Papyrus, on
the other hand, continued to seem unfazed. He stood tall and unflinching,
regarding the dogs with his habitual disdain. “WHAT, PRECISELY, DO ANY OF YOU
MUTTS WANT? WHY ARE YOU LOITERING OUTSIDE MY HOUSE INSTEAD OF OUT ON PATROL? AT
LEAST I WENT OUT TO TRY AND CAPTURE
THE HUMAN.”

Dogaressa
nodded slowly. “That’s true…you did…”

“Maybe he
could have done it,” Dogamy added. His eyes narrowed. His teeth gleamed a
little in the faint light. “But Sans is always
in the way.”

Doggo
whuffed in agreement. “Sans is always where he’s not wanted.”

Dogaressa
took a step forward. Papyrus didn’t take a step back. “Is that why you’re allowing this pathetic little display, Captain? Did
Sans not want to take his medicine any other way?”

“Hand him
over,” Dogamy continued. He started to draw his axe. “We’ll fix that.”

Sans felt a
chill race up his spine as Papyrus really did move to set him down on the
ground. But in the next moment, he realized that he was being given a second to
get his feet under him. It was a second he took, and once he had, he found
himself forcibly shoved behind
Papyrus. Protected, and visibly so.

The dogs
barely had time to register that much before they were all dragged down
forcibly to the snow, souls turned blue. Dogamy hit the hardest. Greater Dog,
on the other hand, almost managed to keep his feet. He had slumped to his knees
but had braced one paw in the snow to keep from slumping further. He looked up
at Papyrus, glaring ferociously, and started to growl.

The other
dogs took up the growl, a rolling tide of malice that washed over the two
skeletons and promised violence to follow.

“RUN,” said
Papyrus to Sans.

Sans wanted
to. He wanted so much to run from this place and never look back. But only if
his brother was with him. “nuh-uh,” he replied, shaking his head.

“THAT
WASN’T A REQUEST, SANS. IT WAS AN
ORDER. I AM STILL THE CAPTAIN OF THE
SNOWDIN GUARD.”

“i kinda
think they’d like to talk with you about that, bro.”

Sure
enough, all the dogs were now struggling back to their feet. Sans could see
Papyrus starting to sweat with the effort of keeping them all down. He wouldn’t
be able to keep it up for long.

Papyrus
still scoffed, as though this were the easiest thing in the world. “THESE
MUTTS? PAH. ALL I NEED TO DO IS GIVE
THEM ALL A GOOD SWAT, AND THEY’LL FALL WHIMPERING BACK INTO LINE. JUST LIKE
ALWAYS.”

“their bark
is worse than their bite, huh, bro?”

Papyrus
groaned aloud, and Sans couldn’t help but smile a little. “SANS, HONESTLY! NOW
IS NOT THE TIME FOR YOUR HORRIBLE JOKES! NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOU TO BE RUNNING
AWAY!”

“i want to
help.” Sans summoned a pair of blasters, one over each shoulder, turned towards
the dogs with gaping jaws. “how many times have i ever said that? and i can help.”

“RIGHT UP
UNTIL THE POINT ONE OF THEM KILLS YOU. HOW MUCH HP DO YOU HAVE SANS? CAN YOU DODGE THEM ALL AT ONCE?”

Sans
hesitated. He didn’t know. The blasters flickered, and the Dogi took their
chance.

Snarling,
they lunged – Dogaressa went high, and Dogamy went low. A terror seized Sans at
the sight of those gleaming fangs and bloodthirsty eyes, a terror that made him
close his eyes and flinch away as he wildly directed the blasters to fire. He
heard the clash of metal on bone a scant second before he heard Dogamy yelp as
the blast connected with him. “SANS!” he heard Papyrus yell, and Sans opened
his eyes just enough to dodge out of the way of a slash from Greater Dog’s
spear. But then he felt the air displaced behind him and turned in time to see
Dogaressa’s axe arcing down for his skull, and Sans knew the answer too late,
he couldn’t dodge three at once…

Sans felt
an impact, but it was one that sent him staggering to the side, staggering
clear. The next thing he heard was Papyrus crying out in pain as the axe bit
deep into his shoulder. Sans brought himself some time by firing the blasters
to his left and right, but he didn’t look to see whether they hit their mark. He
looked up instead to his brother, who was still clashing bone to-to-axe with
Dogaressa.

“RUN, YOU
IDIOT!” Papyrus barked, risking a glance back at Sans. It was a risk that
nearly led to him getting his head taken off as Dogamy came to his wife’s aid.
Papyrus pivoted on the spot, breaking the deadlock and almost leading to the
two dogs knocking their skulls together, and he stabbed out with his staff to
catch Dogamy a hard blow to the gut.

Papyrus
could fight. Papyrus really was stronger than any of them. Sans had his tricks,
of course, but Sans wasn’t used to fighting anymore. Papyrus could take more
than one hit, and Papyrus was showing that he would take more than one hit if it would keep Sans from taking a
hit at all.

Surrounded
by flying fur and the sound of snapping teeth and clashing weapons, Sans
realized the cold, hard truth of the matter – he was a liability, and maybe
always had been.

“please
don’t die,” he heard himself say, as though a stranger spoke those heartfelt
words. He waited, even if it meant dodging another blow from Dogamy, until he
saw Papyrus nod.

Then Sans
vanished, and didn’t reappear within the bounds of Snowdin.

When the
world came back into focus, he was surrounded by the tall trees of the forest,
and all was silent but the wind.

* * *

He
considered going back through the woods, towards the big doors that never
opened. Towards his, for lack of a better word, “friend” who lived in the
Ruins. Maybe this time, she would open the doors to him. Maybe he could hide
away with her and never have to face this world again, and maybe she wasn’t as
unhinged in person as she sometimes sounded.

Sans went
forward, instead – back towards Snowdin. Maybe he would only find his brother’s
dust to greet him. But at least if he did, one monster could ensure he got a
proper funeral.

Such was
the world they lived in, and Sans hated
every inch of it.

He hated
himself even more for being too much of a coward to keep it from going on.

At least
the teenagers who lived here really were a matter of bark over bite, posturing
over violence. Some rumors had it that this was the reason they lived in the
woods in the first place, because they were too weak to cut it against the rest
of the Underground. Others whispered that they had been banished to the forest
for being too violent even for most monsters, that the things they did to those
they captured in the dark would disgust the King himself.

Sans didn’t
really care to find out, either way. It was probably safe to say that he’d been
pretty well fired from his job as a sentry around about the time he’d hurried
out of Snowdin alongside Frisk. So he wasn’t really obligated to care anymore.

Time to
move on.

He didn’t
take a shortcut back to town, though. He didn’t know the sight that would greet
him when he did, and it always took him a second or two to get his bearings
back after making such a leap. A second or two would be all a loyal citizen
needed to finish the job, if the wrong person was waiting for him.

So Sans
walked, instead, no matter how tedious or tiresome a journey it was. He walked,
and deliberately didn’t look around at the occasional patter of snow from the
trees or the crunch of it underfoot from someone he couldn’t see. Only once did
he pause, when he felt a presence right over his head, felt the pulse of menace
and hostility closing in. Only once did he take a deep breath and risk calling
out: “i’m not here to hurt anyone.”

Then he
slid forward along a patch of ice and didn’t wait to see if anyone had heard
him. But the sounds of being followed were less frequent, after that, and faded
entirely as he got near the bridge. Maybe they’d listened. Maybe they just
didn’t want to risk harassing a guard, even now, even a guard as weak as him.
Sans resolutely continued not to care, either way.

He did stop
for a little while, when he reached the bridge. He stopped and settled down in
the shadow of a larger boulder, there to doze for a while until the deeper
darkness of night fell. It itched at him, to wait like this, to leave his
brother like this. With more practice than he would have liked, Sans tamped
that worry down. If Papyrus was going to die, he would already be dead. If he
had managed to get away – he has to have
gotten away – then it would be stupid to invalidate all his hard work
protecting Sans by getting himself killed anyway.

At least
between the woods and the bridge, it was all open ground. He’d hear anyone
coming long before they did anything.

He hoped as
much, at least.

But with
nothing else to go on, Sans closed his eyes and quickly fell into a doze.

* * *

He woke to
the sounds of distant laughter.

Sans didn’t
immediately give any sign that he was awake, of course, not until he was sure
that it really was distant laughter.
Finally, he decided that it must be coming from near the western gate of
Snowdin, which was unfortunately right where he needed to go. Even if his
ultimate intention was to creep around the wall towards the eastern gate, there
was no good way to do that without passing at least briefly in sight of the
gate on this side.

He risked
peeking around his hiding place and down along the bridge. The sight that
greeted him was just as bad as he’d thought, and even stranger to boot. All the
guard dogs were clustered around the gate, and as they talked and laughed with
each other they seemed to be hoisting something over the gate, there to hang
like a sack of old laundry. Or maybe a scarecrow, to keep the mysterious
teenagers away. Yes, a scarecrow, that was what it had to be.

Then Sans
caught a flash of red armor from the lights of the distant town, and felt so
dizzy with horror that he slumped back against the rock. His brother. They were hanging his brother.

Sans
struggled to breathe and tried not to rattle in shock. Any failures to do so on
his part fortunately still weren’t loud enough to be heard over the dogs’
jeering. Slowly, too slowly, he managed to claw bits and pieces of rationality
back together.

Papyrus was
alive. Probably unconscious, if the lack of shouting was anything to go by, but
in one piece. Hanging wouldn’t finish him off. They didn’t need to breathe. It was a pleasant feeling, and the feel of fresh
air moving through your skull could help you get your bearings back. But it wasn’t
actually required. A rope around the
neck probably couldn’t even stop them from breathing anyway. Probably, at least
– he’d never been in a position to find out. Either way, Papyrus was alive, the
guards were keeping him alive just a little longer even if only to humiliate
him. That was fine. It gave them time.

Sans
resolved to wait five minutes. Fortunately, luck was finally with him and the
guards left after another three. He heard their voices retreating, but didn’t
hear the gates closing. Obviously, they wanted their disgraced former commander
to be seen. But whether he was seen or not, silence returned after they were
gone.

Sans
screwed his eyesockets shut. He took a deep breath.

Then he
rolled out from behind the rock, stared down the bridge, and took a hasty
shortcut into the deeper shadows beside the gate. He furiously blinked the
world back into focus after doing so, and the first thing he looked around for
was his brother. Sans felt his soul grow warm with relief to see that Papyrus was awake, was trying to work at the rope around his neck.

And then it
felt like he’d just fallen into an icy river, when he realized one particular
detail that was giving Papyrus a lot of trouble in that attempt.

“your arm…”

Papyrus
froze. Sans heard his breath catch.

“WHAT ABOUT
IT?” his brother finally asked, stubborn as ever. But he wasn’t stubborn enough
to keep the notes of pain out of his voice.

Sans, for
his part, didn’t even bother to try and hide the horror in his. “it’s gone.”

“YES, SANS.
VERY ASTUTE.” Papyrus lifted his remaining arm to try again to work at the
rope. “I TOLD YOU TO RUN, BY THE WAY.”

“yeah, you
did. didn’t say where to.”

“I DIDN’T
THINK I HAD TO SPECIFY!”

Sans winced
as his brother’s affronted yowl cut through the otherwise quiet night. “yeah,
well, you did. so i’m thinking we, um, maybe make a break for waterfall? after
i get you down. and maybe after you take a deep breath and chill the hell out. i kinda wanna get you down without the dogs
coming back, y’know?”

He
apparently made a sufficiently convincing point. Papyrus subsided, grumbling,
and Sans considered his options. He tried to ignore how dire those options must
be, if Papyrus had even ignored such an obvious pun.

Finally, he
took a quick shortcut up to the top of the gate, immediately crouching down as
low against the wood as he could once he reoriented himself. Hopefully, no one
would think to look up and notice a slightly different shadow when Papyrus
himself was making such a visible sight. Then Sans went to work slowly easing
himself over to the beam supporting his brother’s weight. He slid his fingers
carefully over the wood, searching for the rope.

“damn.”

“WHAT?”

“that’s,
uh…that’s not a rope holding you up, is it?”

“YES, THANK YOU, SANS! I HADN’T NOTICED!”

It was a
wire. Sans had to swallow down the urge to giggle hysterically. He managed it,
just barely, and set to work trying to undo the knot in the wire instead.
“man,” he heard himself babbling as he scrabbled at it. “we should have just
gone with frisk. we should have just blown this mean cream stand and gone with
the kid.”

“I, UNLIKE
YOU, STILL TOOK MY RESPONSIBILITIES SERIOUSLY! UNLIKE YOU, AND UNLIKE THOSE FLEABITTEN MONGRELS!”

“oh, yeah?
and how’s that workin’ out for you? seems to me like you went barking up the wrong tree, bro.”

“I HATE
YOU.”

“i know,”
Sans replied glumly.

The wire
was thin and fine, the sort of thing you’d find in a piano. Worse still, up
here he had next to no light to work with. Sans struggled with it for a moment,
anyway. He first tried to find the knot, and then tried to work it undone,
until at last a stab of pain shot through his palm and he winced.

“WHAT
HAPPENED?” Papyrus asked immediately.

“nothing,”
Sans replied, just as immediately, before trying to wipe his bleeding palm on
the beam. “look, i can pull you up. but, uh, somebody’s gonna notice pretty
quick, and you’re still not going anywhere until we get this leash off.”

“THEN GET IT OFF OF ME!”

“i can’t!” Sans snapped back, feeling his
temper fray in a way the wire was stubbornly refusing to do so. “not without
something with an edge. unless you want me to try chewing through it, boss.”

For a wild
moment, he wondered if Papyrus really would demand just that. It was this
doubt, combined with the creeping terror that came with the risk of being
caught at any second, that gave Sans the courage to raise his voice towards his
brother. Once he realized that he’d done so, he wondered just what was wrong
with him. Before today, it would have been a minor miracle if he could even
look Papyrus in the eye.

“WHAT PLAN
DO YOU HAVE TO ACQUIRE SOMETHING WITH AN ‘EDGE’, THEN?” his brother finally
asked, more quietly.

Sans let
out his breath in a long sigh. “couple of ideas, actually,” he said. “but, uh,
they’d both require leaving you for a bit. you okay with that?”

“I FAIL TO
SEE HOW EITHER OF US HAS A CHOICE.”

That was
probably true. “okay.” He glanced over his shoulder, back down the road into
town and towards his destination. Before he could entirely stop it, Sans found
himself whispering: “sorry.”

Papyrus
still heard him. “FOR WHAT?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Sans didn’t
really know where to start. So he didn’t. He just took a quick shortcut off the
bridge and into town.