The usual people and unusual talks

[Sans]

“So, wait a minute, this gaster guy was your mentor, Alphy?” Undyne said after a brief moment of silence.

“Y-Yeah,” Alphys replied, taking a sip of her red bean milkshake, “h-he taught me everything I know.”

“He’s an anime nerd too?!” Undyne exclaimed.

The gold lizard chuckled, her cheeks blushing. “Actually, no. T-That one’s all me.”

“Well, now he sounds like less fun.”  

“W-Well, n-no, he’s fine! He’s just…”

She paused, her finger twirling the straw inside her milkshake. For a few moments, the business inside the parlor from wandering waitresses, the chatter of their fellow, equally monstrous customers, and the light, almost inaudible jazz playing from the speakerphones above them.

“H-He’s… a bit… vindictive,” she finally said.

Undyne blinked before her eyes narrowed a bit. “Vindictive? Like, he… he hates humans, right?”

Alphys gave her a barely visible nod. The fish glanced off in the direction Sylvia went off to before bringing a hand to her forehead.

“Gah, this is gonna be great…” she spoke through gritted teeth and an exasperated grunt, “is that why he wants to meet up?”

“Y-Yeah. H-He thinks i-if we don’t and he finds a human he’ll…”

The scientist fidgeted in her chair, her tail wriggling.

“I-It wo-won’t be pretty…”

“Fantastic…” Undyne replied as she finished off the last of her milkshake. She slammed it back down on the table with enough force to crack the glass a bit. She brought some fingers to her head, rubbing at her temples.

“So, just to see if I’m on board with this, this gaster guy is an unstable skeleton guy who hates humans and was also your mentor, and no one can remember him because when he jumped into the CORE, he erased himself from time and space and thus wiping away everyone’s memory of him?”

Alphys paused for a short moment, processing the entirety of Undyne’s spiel. She eventually nodded.

“That sounds like the weirdest anime plot in existence,” the fish warrior proclaimed, a smile forming on her face, “I absolutely love it!!”

“O-Okay…” Alphys said, blinking away her confusion.

“What do you think about this, Sans?” Undyne said, turning towards the skeletal comedian.

She saw him staring at the center of the table, stiff as a board and somehow whiter than white itself. Only his fingers moved, and they constantly dug into the fabric of his shorts, as if his hands had been stapled to his legs. His trademark smile stretched far and wide, only growing in width with every passing second in a way that wasn’t possible for anyone, human or monster, to accomplish without pain. His glowing, pin-prick sized eyes vibrated within the darkness inside his eye sockets.

“Sans?” Undyne said, lifting a hand and moving it towards the skeleton.

***

Don’t forget.

He remembered those two words as clear as the day itself. The small, almost imperceptible red crayon sentence flashed inside his bony head over and over again. Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget. Such a simple sentence, packed with a meaning invisible to his comprehensive eye.

He stumbled towards the basement door, the snowstorm around him blowing snow and ice into him and blinding his vision. He unlocked the door with a shivering hand, rushing inside to escape the cold. He stepped down the stairs, his head pulsing, static in his vision as he descended into the darkness below.

He found himself back in the room he had frequented so often in an earlier time and one that he had attempted to remove from memory: The White Room. The room of white walls, checkered floors, endless shelves and computers, and the pink curtain at the very end of The White Room. He stomped towards the shelves, each step lethargic at best, his coat stained with ketchup and his breath smelling of the foul substance. He pulled open a drawer, wading through a variety of graphs and reports until he found it. He pulled the picture out and stared it.

It was him and Papyrus, standing in the middle of a forest, smiling into the camera. The snow had been calm that day, barely drizzling to provide the skeletons with the vacation they wanted. It was a time where he didn’t have to force a smile on his face, where his grin was never stretched or pained. The photograph looked skewed and empty, though, as if the center of the photograph was off entirely. He stared at the empty space to his left where a head should have been.

Then, a face started to emerge from the black, blemished spot in the print. A smiling, cracked face with pin-prick, glowing dots in the eyeholes. It was like watching a tear in reality. Don’t forget, he told himself at the time. One could not forget the most important memories, else one was doomed to repeat them over and over again. Yet he could not place the face to any name in memory. He closed his eyes and grit his teeth, struggling to remember.

Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Don’t forget. Never forget. Never. Never. Never.

***

Undyne placed a hand on Sans’ shoulder. His eyes snapped towards it, anticipating a violent retribution for some slight before his body slumped backwards. He loosened, leaning back against his chair.

“oh, sorry, i kinda spaced out. what happened?” sans said, his tone casual and dismissive. He glanced between the two as he sipped his ketchup milkshake, sliding his feet onto the top of the table.