Chapter Text
It didn't hurt, which he supposed was an unexpected good, given that he was. Well. Dying. Papyrus felt something thud against his back, between his shoulder blades, then collapsed forward against the doppelganger, suddenly unable to stand. And a force rushed in and pushed his mind back, and all was darkness.
And.
And he opened his eyes?
Not that he had eyes anymore, he knew that, but what else was he supposed to say? That he had been seeing nothing; then he suddenly started seeing again?
Seeing an unpolished concrete floor.
That he stared at uncomprehendingly as he knelt unmoving and got used to being in a body again. Everything felt bad, but some badnessess stood out particularly! Such as his brain, which was wrapped in itchy wool. Such as the awful smell, a rotting sickly sweet. And his throat, which had a shard of glass stuck in it. He swallowed and winched, hand automatically coming up.
Ah, but there was nothing but bone. He no longer had a throat, even though he still ate and spoke. The other monsters laughed at him for using his human descriptions, but, well. He still felt like he had his old body.
He scrapped his hands over his eyes. Eye sockets. Whatever. Then he looked around.
It was concrete all, floor, walls, ceiling.
The wall in front of him had a reinforced door that stood partly open, but it was too dark for him to see through the doorway. The wall behind him had a long narrow window, way up top along the ceiling, which let in the only light to see by. It was a rich honey light; even the ugly smelly room it shone into couldn't stop it from being beautiful. He already knew he couldn't reach the window. So instead he shuffled backwards so he could see through it.
Gold. A glorious gold wisped with white. He could not place it. What part of the underground was like this? Hotland was a ruddier glow. And the wetland was a vivid blue. And Snowdin was a silvery glimmering.
As he thought he ran his thumb along his fingers, feeling the notches from the small bones. No gloves? Then he looked at his hand. Then his arm. Then the rest of him.
And closed his eyes and tried not to scream in frustration. Where were his clothes?!? Why wasn't he wearing any?!! Urgh, this was so stupid. He rummaged through his inventory, which was mostly inexplicably full of black muck, and pulled out a shirt. The shirt was much too big for him and. Oh. There was writing on the shirt?
For a second he squinted at the upside-down-to-him graphic of flowers, skulls and letters, before the shapes pulled together in his mind and became words: flower boy.
He grasped a fistful of material in each hand. Okay. He didn't know how to read. But he just did.
Panic fluttered in the back of his mind, a wild inarticulate emotion: he DIED. But he's HERE. And he could read now. Apparently. That was a thing he could just do now. And the light was weird. And where the heck was he?
The awful smell became a lot stronger as the door was pulled wide open.
Papyrus jumped and craned his neck around to face it, shuffling backwards on his tail bone as three people entered the room: two dogs and one fully armoured individual. He recognised the armour. Sentries. And a decorated member of the royal guard? Ah, but they couldn't be. Instead of the delta rune they had a love heart as their coat of arms. It was definitely the same amour though, even if the symbol had been buffed out and painted over with a new one.
He looked up from the enamelled red heart to their faces.
They looked down at him. They seemed...
Without thinking Papyrus breathed in, both through his nose and mouth, filling his lungs.
The rotting smell was fading, cut through by a thin raininess, that picked up a sharp note of cinnamon. He taped the place his nose had been when he was a child.
And he knew, he was absolutely certain to his soul, that they were confused and also increasingly shocked. Though Papyrus didn't know why. And they weren't as shocked as he was! How did he know what they were feeling? Papyrus had never ever been able to tell what people were feeling. It was a flaw of his, the flaw of his, one baked so deep into him that even rebirth hadn't been able to remove it where it could remove LOVE.
One of the dogs steeled themselves and held out a hand to him, "If you are ready, Papyrus, King Asgore would like to speak to you. Right now."
Papyrus had only half a second to think. But appearing obedient was a priority, especially given the presence of the royal guard. He made sure to sound only polite. "Is he waiting? Oh no!" And he took her hand, "Let's go right away to see him!"
She pulled him up to stand, where he had to take particular care with how he placed his feet so he didn't fall over because of the pain in his joints. But he showed none of what he felt and allowed himself to be lead out of the cell, down the dark corridor beyond.
The other dog walked on his left, the guard walked behind them all. They passed few more cells, and then a kitchen, and finally came to two very large double doors, which stood open.
Through it was very large room, with a wood ceiling and a red and grey carpet. Along all four walls were the same narrow windows that ran along the ceiling, so that light slanted into the room, casting everything in gold and bronze.
It would be an imposing room, it was probably meant to be one, but it was also full of stacks of furniture, tables and benches in tall piles, clusters of office chairs, study cubicles and empty book shelves, echoes of everything this room had ever been.
To the very back, by another set of doors, there was a space that had been cleared and set up. A throne faced a chair. Seats arranged beside the throne in a line. A table, with tea and coffee, off to the side. A small crowd of monsters.
Papyrus instantly recognised his majesty, the king Asgore, who was by far the tallest: his caprine horns almost touching the ceiling. Then there were two guards crossing axes over the doors. A yellow perentie in a lab coat. A remnant in a blue hoodie. One rabbit holding a clipboard and another sitting with a laptop. No, something just like a rabbit? Rabbit shaped. Also a small white dog.
Actually, a lot of dogs?
The rotting smell was overwhelming. Bad. Everyone, every single creature in this crowd, absolutely hated him, he had no doubt of it.
Then the king caught sight of him, of all of them, walking into the room.
The king's eyes went wide, as he turned to face them. This caught everyone else's attention, and they all turned likewise.
And. Wowie. They were very upset? The perentie gasped out loud, the dogs howled softly. There was movement throughout the crowd: people turned to each other, fists were clenched. It was a lot, and Papyrus was suddenly very very nervous. He was used to people hating him. He had less practice with sadness. Everything smelled of sadness now, a sopping wet saltiness, like drowning in the ocean.
What a strange thing for his mind to think. He had never been to the ocean, never even seen it. How did he know what it smelt like?
The king was the first to recover, "Howdy, my friend!" he called to Papyrus, coming forward to greet him as usual, "I hadn't expected to see you again!"
The sentry nudged him forward. Then the dogs moved to stand behind the chair, and the fully armoured individual moved to stand by the throne.
Alone, Papyrus took a faltering step. Then bowed in the way that monsters should do, lifting both hands to his soul and then his eyes. Offer loyalty to the king, who stood as representative of all of monster kind.
"Ah, there is no need to be so formal," murmured the king, eyebrows drawing together.
Papyrus rose out of the bow, to stand ramrod straight with his hands clasped in front of himself; and recalled the script that was beaten into him, "Thank you, your majesty. How can I serve the royal family?"
The king wilted a little, "Would you like some tea, my friend?"
"No thank you, your majesty."
The king sighed, and then sat cross legged on the ground before the single chair, ignoring the throne. "Please sit. We have some unpleasant business to talk through."
Papyrus sat. He sat ramrod straight with his hands clasped in his lap in front of himself, to try and hinder his shivering. It did not work.
The king mirrored him, clasping his own paws together, "There is no easy way to say this. You have been murdered."
Papyrus sucked in a breath through his teeth, too fast and too loud. No! They'd found him out?
No. No no, don't panic. Asgore used the word 'murdered'. And seemed to assume that Papyrus didn't know that he was dead.
Careful. Carefully craft the right tone of voice. Thankfully it was not hard to sound scared and confused. "I'm dead?"
"In all the ways that matter, yes, you are dead."
Okay. Okay okay okay. Papyrus needed two pieces of information. He could do this. He was a wily and cunning human taint, wasn't he? His hands shook. "Oh no! When did I die?"
"That is one of the things we are trying to work out," said Asgore, "How old are you, Papyrus?"
"Nine years old, there about," he said, "but Sans and I have only been underground for ah, six months, I think?"
There was another ripple through the crowd, and the perentie gasped, "Twenty years?"
He snapped to look at her, without meaning to, and she cringed. He quickly looked back to his knees. Twenty years was enough. That was a long enough time. Okay. Last piece.
He cleared his throat around the piece of glass still stuck in it, and allowed a wobble into his voice, "I...I was with Sans, I last remember. Is he-?"
And Asgore surged to his feet and rushed up to Papyrus, taking his tiny hands in his massive paws, "He is fine, my friend!" The king anxiously peered into Papyrus's face, trying desperately to convey this understanding, his kind heart absolutely shredded by the worry he assumed Papyrus must feel, "He has grown up, safe and well loved, he-"
And Papyrus laughed, once. A hard, sharp thing.
Asgore went silent immediately.
"I win," said Papyrus.
He hadn't really intend to say that bit aloud, after all, he wasn't proud of his deeply unhinged gamble. But the sheer relief was almost heady: he won! Sans lived, and lives and will live!! Nothing else matters!!!
The king continued to watch him, carefully, "Now what do you mean by that?"
"It means Sans is okay," Papyrus could hear his own voice, and he sounded giddy and weird.
The king nodded, "That is true. It is something that can be celebrated in this unfortunate situation. But we suspect, Papyrus, that you were killed by a shifter, precisely to feed on Sans."
"Yeah." Papyrus couldn't pretend anymore. It was probably sad news, and maybe he should be sad for himself, and he could already tell that the way he wasn't sad was making a lot of the crowd really uncomfortable, but he didn't care! Not even a little bit! "Sans is very lovable. Even a shifter could love him, easily." He rocked on the chair with a barely contained excitement. It had worked! No plan of his had ever worked before!!
Wow, he felt bad! The wool wrapping around his brain was getting thicker, and making it hard to pay attention to the words that were being spoken to him, and around him.
"hey majesty," said the remnant, "got a few questions for the kid."
"Oh no," said Asgore, stepping back to ceed the floor, "Did he lie?"
"worse."
The remnant dragged an office chair with him as he came, and then sat on it backwards, folding his arms over the backrest to gaze lazily at Papyrus. "hey." He looked and sounded very friendly, but that didn't detract from the raw hatred emanating from him.
"Hello," said Papyrus. He did not know this person, which made things tricky because he didn't know what style of talking to use with them. Did it even matter though, in the face of such abject antipathy? "Who are you?"
"i'm a sentry," said the remnant.
"Oh! A busybody," said Papyrus archly.
The remnant grinned, "ain't got no body, pal. and between you n me, i'm not all that busy either."
Papyrus hummed thoughtfully, "...so a lazy nobody?"
The remnant cracked up laughing. The hatred was briefly cut up by mirth, and afterwards simply didn't come back as strong as before. He must like laughing, Papyrus noted.
"ha, maybe." And then his smile dropt slightly, "but ah, you need to help us out here, kid. we're tryin to figure out when and how you were killed, and what we need to do about it."
And Papyrus did like helping people, though he was very bad at it. The glass shard in his throat slipped down to his chest, and began to burn. He rubbed at it absentmindedly as he tried to think. Ultimately, nothing mattered anymore, so he might as well, right? "Okay?"
"thanks! so, first question: how come you hate sentries?"
Papyrus went still. There was simply no way to answer that with being way too honest.
The remnant sighed and swung in his chair, "you gotta throw us a bone here-"
Papyrus smiled without meaning to, and added on: "No! You are a skeleton, you have your own bones to throw!"
"yeah yeah yeah, make no bones about it!"
"Oh my God, those are so bad!" Papyrus flapped a hand at him.
"would you say... bad to the b-"
"NO!" Papyrus lunged forward to hold up a hand, "IF I MADE ANY JOKES THEY WOULD BE BETTER JOKES!!"
At which point the remnant raised his brow as if to say, go on then! Show us the superior joking?
"I'll make a better joke to marrow," Papyrus said, a little bit proud of the pun.
"good one!" he winked. And then, "so, i can see you think i'm cool, which i am for sure, but why not the others?"
Right. Papyrus had almost forgotten that this was all an interrogation. So. So so so. Hating sentries. He sat back in his chair, crossing his legs on the seat to get more comfortable.
"I don't hate sentries," he began, "If I hated them, then I would be killing them, no? I merely dislike sentries." And the burning in his chest grew, his own body aching, pushing out the words that he'd never intended to say to anyone, "just like I dislike the royal guard. And the arbiters. And I dislike my classmates. And my foster parents. That's the way of human taint, isn't it? Ugly little creature filled with the echos of hate who can't help but be dissatisfied with every good thing given to them."
The remnant's grin went very stiff, before he forcefully relaxed it, "why were you talking to the arbiters?"
"To talk to the king." Papyrus's own smile twisted as he fought to not scowl. The anger was as strong as ever, even after twenty years of being dead. "They wouldn't let me."
"why not?"
He shrugged bitterly. "Who would you believe? The thing that came from a human with LOVE, or two of your trusted citizens who have kindly taken on two terrible burdens?" He breathed in, trying to get the better of himself. Oh? The ambient hatred was gone. It was quite completely replaced with horror.
"i would." The remnant's voice was quiet.
"What?"
"i would've believed you."
And he's telling the truth.
For a second Papyrus looked into a world where someone, anyone, had listened to him. Had believed him.
Look at that. He had some tears left after all. He thought he'd cried them all already. And wiped them away. "That's. That's nice," he said, "That's such a nice idea." He allowed himself to indulge in a full five seconds of wondering what it would've been like. Would he and Sans have gone to school together? Maybe they would've had a new home! Just the two of them.
It would've been nice.
"but it didn't happen that way," said the remnant, as if reading his mind.
"I wanted it to," said Papyrus. "I really did try." Why did it matter if remnant knew that? But it did matter, even now, especially now. Papyrus tried, really!
"i believe you," the sentry said. "sometimes you just... run out of trying."
Yeah. Papyrus had run out of trying, and also out of time.
"...Sans got sick," he admitted in a low voice, "And they wouldn't get him medicine."
The dogs growled, and Asgore made a dark sound like a twisting branch. Papyrus could taste the anger, much more than he could smell it, like chilli oil across the tongue and throat.
"so. you had a plan."
Papyrus nodded. "I'd heard about shifters. Everyone likes to tell scary stories about them, but if you talk to anyone who's actually met one they tell such interesting things!" He hadn't been able to read any of the books written about them so he'd had to talk and talk and talk, to anyone willing to share with him. "The rabbit lady at the Inn told me about the shifter they'd found in their village during the war, and it had protected them as they evacuated under the mountain before going into hiding again. See," and he gestured with both hands, "they don't want to get caught! They want to get along. And I talked to Gerson and he said," and here he leaned forward, "That shifters are like dragons and they hord their people. So you got," and he started counting on his fingers, "shape shifting, no need for food, very tough, very protective, and they live a long time. The ideal guardian!"
"barring the initial murder," said the remnant flatly.
"It's not-" he cut off at the glare the remnant levelled at him. It made him feel so incredibly guilty. Like it was the wrong thing to let himself be killed. "It doesn't matter!" he said stubbornly.
"and how do you think your brother feels, learnin that someone killed themselves for him."
Papyrus scoffed, "I'm sure he feels the same as all monsters do when they think about the six humans who've died for them."
"the humans are the one who put us underground-"
"And I'm the one who took Sans and then fell into a cursed mountain!" He clenched his hands, tighter tighter tighter, "They took his soul when he was six months old. I didn't know he was going to revive. I thought I killed him." He was shaking, shaken, hands in fists so tight it hurts. "I got him into this mess." The shaking got worse, and his bones shuddered, joints grinding. "I. I feel quite bad."
The remnant had gone an incredible shade of grey, "same." He ran a hand over his skull, as he stared into the void. "okay. um" then he spun on the chair and got up, "actually i'm done. i need to lie down." And he did exactly that, crumpling to the ground behind the throne, like a sick dog hiding away from predators. Papyrus wanted to go after him. But when he stood the ground swayed underneath him, and he crashed back into the chair.
Asgore flicked a hand. The dog sentries that led Papyrus here peeled away from their stations, and went to assist the remnant. Meanwhile Asgore himself steadied Papyrus, washing green magic over his shoulders and back. It dulled the burning, but not the fuzziness of his brain.
"Now my friend," the king said in his kind way, "finish your story. Sooner started sooner ended!"
"Okay," he said. What was he talking about? Dying? Shifters, that's right. "So I did all this research because I'd found a shifter-"
"YOU FOUND ONE?!!" the fully armoured individual yelled, making him AND the king jump, "You found a goddamn shifter and you DIDN'T TELL THE GUARD??!"
The vaguely rosemary ish smell around her tells him it's not a rhetorical question, mixed with the salty-spice of grief-and-guilt. For a the briefest moment, he thought about using that weakness, striking at the core of her sense of self by honing in on how she failed to protect.
But that seemed mean?
Instead, he yelled back! "It didn't want any trouble!" It was easy to yell, "It was at the bottom of a cave!! Kids would dare each other to go in and throw stones at it!!!"
He was breathing hard, and had to blink away a cloud of little black flecks that was crowding his vision. Was it hard to breath? The warmth made it hard to tell.
"It-" He panted, "You can. Tell a lot about someone from. From how they battle. This shifter. It would hide on the ceiling of the cave until people went away. So I talked to it. I said I wouldn't fight it-"
"And what if it had killed Sans?!" growled the royal guard.
"Stupid!" he rolled his eyes at her, "Sans only had me, and I wouldn't have loved it if it killed my only family. So it would've starved if it did that."
He was beginning to get dizzy, and he leant his head against the curved back of his chair. The vague warmth swallowed his whole torso and climbed his neck into his head.
There was a beeping. An alarm? And the yellow perentie took out her phone, "Five- five more minutes, everyone."
Asgore stood to his full height, "Do we have all the information we need?" he said to the crowd.
The rabbit shaped creature with the clipboard held up her paw, "We have records of royal fostering going back twenty years, yes?"
"We do."
"Then we do not need anything more to launch an investigation."
"Very good." And something about Asgore suddenly changed. Perhaps the way he held his shoulders, or lifted his head. But he was suddenly very large and very imposing, a king before his people, "To all others who are here today, you have heard."
"We have heard," the crowd echoed back.
"I render no judgement on this creature. No more than we render judgement on every monster who's freedom was bought with the death of the six humans. Do any disagree?"
There was silence.
"Are any dissatisfied?"
There was silence.
"Then, I dismiss this council."
All at once, the tension in the room was gone. The king himself sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "let me make you a cup of tea," he said to Papyrus, and then he went to stand in line behind all the dogs that had made a dive for the table before; because no one on earth cared that Asgore was a king when red velvet cupcakes were on the line.
There was nothing for Papyrus to do. Almost detached from his body, he watched as everyone had a drink and something to eat and talked among themselves. The two dog sentries got the remnant that had spoken to him to drink a cup of coffee and sit more comfortably in recliner that they dug out from a pile of furniture. The rabbit shaped lady rapidly gave instructions to three new monsters that had came in, and they left again in a hurry. More food was brought in. The light through the window changed from gold to pink. The whole room smelt different. The taste of salt and the smell of frying bread and melting butter. Sorrow, and relief, and determination to do right.
Papyrus swallowed. He would get up, but he couldn't. The warmth had spread throughout his whole body, so he couldn't tell where any of his limbs were. He blinked again. The black specks were swarming his whole vision. All of it. His soul shuddered in his chest. His breath rasped.
He was going to die.
It came to him suddenly. One plus one was two. Gravity pulled things down. He was going to die.
Oh. It was a good thing, then, that they all got to have this last conversation.
The remnant. No, the skeleton? He liked to be called a skeleton, Papyrus remembers that now. Sans had recovered enough by this time to stand again, and he came by the chair, watching Papyrus with a frown. "...you alright, my dude?"
And Papyrus sucked in a breath to reply.
And instead listed forward and vomited up a large quantity of blackish muck.
That's probably very bad, he thought as he fell sideways. His mind was pushed backwards into darkness before he could hit the floor.