#Serif associates gaster with “deader than dead” and “erased”

[imbonewary]

Shifting Sans Chapter 7 "Good Morning, or Is It?"

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Chapter 1 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 8

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I woke up to a low voice saying something but I didn't catch what. My cheek was pressed against something solid but warm, laying on my front. One arm was curled up into my side, the other dangling. A hand was resting between my shoulders.

Hand?

And the solid thing I'm laying on is breathing.

Ah, I must be laying on Pap's chest, maybe we fell asleep watching movies or something. Wouldn't be the first time. Movies would also explain the weird thoughts nibbling at the back of my mind. Another hand began gently petting my head and I was almost lulled back to sleep. Then it started shaking my shoulder gently.

"it's time to wake up, brother."

"Five more minutes, bro..." I groaned, curling in on myself. 

The surface under my cheek chuckled. That wasn't my brother's laugh.

I stiffened, immediately wide awake as my head shot up, staring into a too-familiar face. I blinked a few times as memories of last night slowly filtered into my mind. Right, he is my brother, just not that one. My new brother. He adopted me. Cuz he's me. But not me. Alternate universe shenanigans. 

And I was currently lying on top of him.

Clearing my throat of awkwardness, I backed up with a blush, the blanket sliding off my back as I tried to not look like I was scrambling to get off of him. He sat up too, still bemused. Which I could feel. On my soul. Through my wings. That's right, I have wings now. 

That whole crazy mess wasn't just a dream.

"'mornin' sleepy head," Sans said with a raised eyebrow.

"'morning," I replied, rubbing one eye. "Did you uh, sleep well?" With me on top of you?

"well enough," he smiled.

"Breakfast is gonna get cold if you don't hurry up," a voice called from behind me and I stiffened. Someone else is here and I didn't even notice. I'm usually more aware of my surroundings. Now that I was actually paying attention I could hear cooking sounds behind me and looked back to find the kitchen area with-

The Human.

Holding a knife.

Panic coursed through me as I tasted dust in the air, felt the swish of a blade too close to my head, saw their empty smile as they struck down monster after monster after monster as they laughed and laughed-

I gasped, snatched at the hand that touched my shoulder, summoned bones around me, on my feet, ready to dodge, ready to fight-

"eeeaaasy bro, easy, i didn't mean to startle you," I could feel his shock, see his wide sockets, his free hand held up placatingly. Right, this was Sans, my big brother, meaning this couldn't be that human, I'm safe here, right? "i guess i forgot to mention the kid was human, huh."

"That..." I swallowed, releasing his wrist. "That woulda been nice to know." Figures, my life can't be that easy, can it. "S-sorry I... I'm just... jumpy, I guess." My bones were still summoned; better take care of those. Dissipate, darn you. "Nothing against you, kiddo, but I haven't had much positive exposure to humans and wasn't expecting to see one with a knife this morning."

Nonplused, they looked at the knife in their hands.

"It's a butter knife," they deadpanned.

"Still registers as a knife."

They raised an eyebrow.

"frisk, please," Sans urged quietly.

With a sigh, they rolled their eyes and put down the knife on the counter, holding up their now empty hands at shoulder height. I could distantly feel their annoyance over the table between us and I was still having trouble controlling my breathing but seeing them unarmed did help as I finally managed to dissipate the last of my bone attacks. I sat back down on the couch; one foot on the floor while the other knee was now held against my chest as I felt my wings curling around my shoulders slightly. I was barely resisting the urge to fold into the fetal position. 

“I’m sorry,” I said again, looking away, acidic shame bubbling up in my chest. “You just… reminded me of someone. For a minute. It wasn’t a happy memory.”

“I gathered,” they said, though they seemed more interested than annoyed now.

“we'll have plenty of time to discuss hard topics after breakfast,” Sans stood, interrupting whatever they were going to say next. “come on, it’s time for a formal introduction.”

Sans offered me a hand with a smile.

I hesitated, I don’t deserve his kindness, especially after an outburst like that, but it would be rude to refuse, right? Besides, I owed it to him to make things work between me, him, and Frisk. I am the stray here. 

I took his hand and let him pull me up to my feet, leading me to the table between the living room and kitchen, pulling out one of four chairs for me as he dropped my hand. I sat, as bidden, and Sans set about helping the human get everything on the table. Three plates were set and Sans pulled out a chair opposite me for the human before sitting down himself. 

"so," Sans started. "before we dig in, thank you frisk, for making breakfast while I was taking care of serif." The human gave a grin and a thumbs up. "and serif, this is frisk; they fell into the underground about a week ago and i was assigned as their guardian. frisk, this is serif; i don't know much about him yet either but i picked him up from pap's last night. you remember what i told you about The Labs, right?" Frisk nodded. "serif is a clone of me that was in hiding for a while but now he's here and i've decided to take him in as my little brother so he'll be your uncle from now on. that said, let's dig in!"

Frisk needed no further encouragement and began greedily eating their breakfast while Sans and I started at a more reasonable pace. There was fried eggplant yolks, sliced yham, and toast with butter and crab apple jam. At least the odd underground food was more or less how I remembered it. It was pretty good, too, considering a human made it; humans can't use magic so the magic in the ingredients themselves must have been enough to keep it as monster food. Then again, humans are more common here so maybe they found a way around that. 

"you did a good job making monster food for the first time, frisk," Sans praised. "you learn fast."

Frisk grinned happily, unaware of the egg on their face. I hid my snicker by clearing my throat, which also got their attention so I subtly swiped at my own cheek, mirroring where the egg was on theirs. They stuck their tongue out at me before wiping the offending food off with the back of their hand and I grinned, sticking my own blue tongue out at them. They feigned offense but I could feel their delight. 

Sans pretended to not notice. 

Breakfast was finished without much chatter, we were too busy eating. Frisk finished first, surprising no one with how fast they scarfed everything down, and began clearing the table. Sans was done next, and I finished off whatever food was left over; I didn't usually need to eat this much but I guess I was still recovering from universe hopping and nearly dying. 

"Last one to eat washes dishes!" Frisk declared, heading for the couch. 

"Fair enough," I replied as I got up with my plate. 

"i'll dry and put them away," Sans offered, grabbing a towel. "so, I have to go to the capitol later to finish some paperwork for frisk and start some for serif, but i'll admit i'm insanely curious about you, serif. you said you were cloned in The Labs, right?"

"Right, it's... more complicated than that," I said, loud enough for Frisk to hear from the couch, glad to have something to do with my hands. Do I go with my cover story with the people I'm going to be living with or just bite the bullet and tell the truth? The best kept secrets are the ones not shared but they could help cover for me, too. And what if the resets are still happening? Do I tip my hand this early?

Maybe I'll just skip the reset bit.

"Ok, this is going to sound crazy but," I braced myself. "I'm actually Sans from an alternate universe. I don't know exactly how I got here but don't think there's any way back. That's why I said I'm your clone; it technically isn't a lie, I'm just not from The Labs. However, my universe did have its own version of The Labs so I still had to deal with that. It was just a much smaller scale than it was here, with only me and my brother as test subjects."

"you had a brother, too, then?" Sans asked. "i had one, a very long time ago, but he wasn't a boss monster so i outlived him." 

"Are you a Boss Monster?" I asked. Oh right, so is Undyne; that works differently here. 

"yes, but we can get into my past more later," Sans said, waving away his pain and discomfort. "i want to hear more about you! i take it you're not a boss monster, since you seemed surprised that I was?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Skeleton monsters tend to be on the strong side of average but nothing like a Boss Monster." I can ask more about how that works later, along with Sans' history. "At least, where I come from anyways."

"So aside from Sans being older than you, by, like, a lot," Frisk piped in. "What other kinds of differences are there?"

"Well, I've noticed a lot of differences so far, but a lot is still kinda the same too," I shrugged. "Like, everyone I used to know is still around, in one form or another, but they're all jumbled up, doing different things than I remember; like Alphys being the current Royal Scientist instead of Toriel, or how Asgore and Undyne have swapped places. Papyrus is a good friend to you here but he's supposed to be my brother."

And I'm never going to see him again.

A sob caught in my throat as I dropped the fork I'd been working on. I'd seen him die, sure, and had to live without him for a while after that, but he always came back the next reset, like nothing ever happened. There's no coming back from this, though, no second chance, there's more than just time and space keeping us apart. He's deader than dead to me now, he may as well be-

Erased.