There was a faint knock at the door.

Groaning, Sans rose from his couch, perhaps the only spot on this planet he could call home. He didn't understand why so many criticized him for sleeping, it was practically nature's anesthetic. When you were asleep, you forgot about everything, everything. Like how the body count was rising each day, how monsters were practically being torn from their homes, how...

"Toriel's missing."

Asgore stood in front of the doorway, a grim expression plastered on his face. "I'm sure she'll come back," Sans reassured him as he plopped down in the living room. "Toriel is probably just late..." His voice trailed off. Since when was a monster ever just taking a well deserved walk around Chicago?

"She was devastated," Asgore sighed, running his hand through his hair. "Asriel went missing this morning, took too long on a supply run that I told him to take. I didn't think it was dangerous, he was just going to Grillby's which is right across the street..."

"But then when it was noon," he continued, "Toriel couldn't take it. She said that someone had killed him, killed our little boy again." A weak laugh escaped his lips. "She was impossible to reason with, I couldn't blame her. But she tore out of out apartment and down the street, screaming for Asriel at the top of her lungs. I tried to tell her to come back, but she was already gone, heading north to the human part of town."

Sans' eyesockets had gone dark. This wasn't typically the best thing to wake up to in the morning. He opened his mouth to speak but Asgore was still rambling.

"And that's not the worst part. Some monsters have already caught wind of Toriel and Asriel's disappearance and put two and two together. They're asking me to declare war on the humans, imagine that! We've already experienced so much loss, all of us have. And now, six years later, we're ready to tear out each other's throats again."

Sans couldn't, wouldn't imagine another war. There had already been so much suffering in the last decade. Friends he had known for years were seemingly obliterated in the fires of the nuclear war, and now the threat of civil war was imminent. But things were running smoothly, despite all of this. He and Papyrus ran a delivery business. It wasn't the best, and most nights they often went to bed with empty stomachs, but they had a place, a purpose in life besides being slaughtered again and again in the genocide runs...

"Sans!"

Asgore's interjection caught him off guard. "What do you think? Should we go to war?"

Can't I just go back to sleep? It was probably the answer Sans was going to give, but decided otherwise.

He remembered the times when he and Toriel had sat by the doors of the Ruins for so many nights, exchanging puns and words for what felt like eons. Millions of memories ran through his mind, different endings, pacifist, genocide, and everything in between. He hadn't just known Toriel, they were family. In fact, every monster he felt a bond with, even Jerry. Sans had lived the same life over and over again, had quite literally known the monsters of the Underground for eons as the resets piled up.

Kill them all, he wanted to growl, wanted to scream it at the top of his lungs, if skeletons even had lungs. He hated humanity, hated how easily they gave in to murder and turned a blind eye to it. But if one of their own was murdered, if a monster even laid a hand on just one human, they would cry murder and ignite a civil war.

And despite all this cruelty that the monsters endured, they needed this system. Things were running, the machine was working. They fit into society, even if they were at ten very bottom. A civil war would be genocide, making Frisk's adventures look like a milk run.

But there was this memory, this small memory that Sans couldn't quite remember that lingered at the back of his mind, no matter how many times his subconscious scratched at it. He remembered a lifetime similar to this one, when the world had been engulfed in nuclear inferno, but with casualties that rendered both sides nearly extinct. He remembered picking up a red scarf from a pile of dust in...

(Had it been New York City?)

And so this memory, even if Sans couldn't explain where it came from, was the ultimate deciding piece that held back his rage. "We can't." Asgore flashed him a look of surprise; he had been expecting Sans to join in the caterwaul. "Things right now, they're working, even if monsters are dying. But if we go to war, if we rewrite the rule book, no one will live."

His mind wandered to Papyrus, perhaps the last living thing on this god-foresaken planet that he still had faith in. "I can't lose him, not after the others..."

Asgore nodded, catching on. There was still a haunted look that guarded his gaze, not entirely convinced. "I have a meeting scheduled with Mayor Grimes this afternoon. Perhaps she has heard about the whereabouts of Toriel."

Sans only nodded in reply. They both knew the truth, how the humans would play it out. They would lie, promise to send out their search parties, because after all, everyone was just as important as anyone else in the last free city of America, the last remnant of democracy in Western Civilization. Toriel was probably already rotting alongside Asriel in some underground cellar by now.

Asgore tightened his grip around his trident, and Sans wondered if a time would come when the king would use it in battle. Technically, Asgore wasn't the king as the monster monarchy system had been abolished to give way to democracy as Mayor Grimes had portrayed it as, but monsters still looked up to Asgore, saw him as the only source of authority.

Even now, it's like humans and monsters still live in two different worlds, Sans reflected as Asgore bid him a farewell before disappearing out the front door.

"Sans?"

Papyrus' sudden appearance caught him off guard. "Hey," he waved at his brother, treading cautiously around discussing the matter of why Asgore had decided to visit their household this early in the morning. Despite all of the horrors the two of them had witnessed, watched their friends deteriorate before their very eyes, Sans still retained that parental protection he felt over Papyrus, the need to shield him from everything wrong in the world.

"The news," Papyrus murmured, the livelihood gone in his features. He had lost his energy after the war, after the first bombs fell. He was a quieter version of himself. "The news, it's saying bad things."

Sans gave his brother a weak smile and materialized upstairs, watching the human news station depicting aerial footage of what appeared to be a civil disturbance. Video was played of an assembled police force...

He stiffened. Displayed, for all of monsterkind to see, the police force, their protectors, guardians, taze and drag away their queen.

~*~*~*~*~*

"That's a wrap!"

Sans let loose a sigh and peeled off his work overalls, hanging them on his work station as he began to walk down the run-down roads of Chicago, making sure to stick with the crowd, avoiding the alleyways where humans lurked in the dark, ready to pick off those foolish enough to stray from the herd.

For sixteen hours, every week day, Sans found himself working nonstop in a poor excuse of a packaging factory. Monsters were free labor in the eyes of the humans, toys that could be broken and glued back together, never complaining, never arguing or bothering to fight back.

Papyrus was a different case. Sans couldn't bear the thought of his brother working, having to walk halfway across the city day after day, running the risk of being picked off by some human looking for a fight. Even if it meant working twice as hard to put food on the table for his brother, even if he went to bed with an empty stomach, Sans could handle himself, he was sure of it. He was... capable in battle to say the least. Papyrus was more susceptible, the genocide runs had proved that again and again.

But he was taking a different route, Sans was. The anger of the day, Toriel's disappearance and probable murder had pulled away the curtains and he wanted more than anything to make humanity pay. But he couldn't, for the sake of the peace.

Sans had to see, had to catch a glimpse of where it all went down, paying a final tribute to the friend he had known for so long. And there, at the very end of a narrow alleyway, looking over a rusted chainlink fence, he caught a glimpse into the world of humans.

Unlike the streets he walked, these were cleaner, not coated in a layer of dust. Humans walked freely, their heads high, the thought of being murdered, of having their lives ripped away from them at a moment's notice, was something that never occurred to them. Armageddon was just a waking nightmare.

His eyes fell upon the street corner depicted by the news station, the very corner where Toriel had been beaten and dragged away. Anger drove him forward, and in a fluid motion he was climbing the chainlink fence, his dusted foot landing on the paved sidewalks, a peasant making its way into the land of the rich.

He had a red target on its back. Eyes turned on him, looks of horror flashes his way as human after human began to catch notice of him. I've made a mistake, Sans realized. Someone would already be calling for the police, and he too would be whisked away alongside Toriel.

A part of him was ready to give up, ready to simply get it over with, not had to deal with the constant spiral of life -

"How stupid can you get?"

His attention was directed to a voice barely detectable from above him, ringing with implacable familiarity. A human had their head peaked over from their apartment window, an annoyed look plastered on their face. "Stand still and don't move," they hissed and wound their way to the street, eyeing him from head to toe.

"Monsters aren't supposed to be here," they whispered and Sans felt anger bubble in him. He wasn't some zoo exhibit, he was a skeleton, a once thriving species that had bend nearly obliterated after the first war with the humans, the very war that had resulted in the formation of the Barrier itself.

"You bonehead," they paused a moment, realizing the calamity of the punintentional pun they had made second ago. "You know what I mean," they hissed and grabbed him by the arm. "They're going to kill you if you stay here."

So Sans found himself being whisked away from the streets, once more intertwined with a human.

Fate has an odd sense of humor.

Somewhere Else

"We'll say this before, and maybe you'll get it right!" Major Grimes hissed and stabbed another syringe into the trembling monster before her. "Repeat your name, occupation, and affiliation in our society."

The goat woman frowned for a moment. Her mouth hung slightly ajar, working out the words to say. She shuddered once and a fog seemed to cloud her eyes, thought and free will something that seemed immediately deprived from her. "My name is Toriel Dreemur," the goat woman chanted in a monotonous voice.

Mayor Grimes exchanged an ecstatic look with another scientist and leaned forward, urging Toriel to continue. "My name is Toriel Dreemur," the queen repeated and shuddered once, the serum working against her will, forcing her into submission. A single tear rolled from her left eye, the only indication that she was being forced into this position. "I am a monster, a proud citizen in the free city of Chicago. I am a worker, I have always been a hard worker. Since the dawn of time, we have worked alongside humankind for a future, a better one."

"Toriel," a scientist whispered, leaning in closer to her. "Your son, what is his name?"

Any emotion, any indication of her former self seemed to evaporate. Toriel was placid, completely and utterly indifferent to the world, the serum having served its purpose and wiped her mind cleaned of all thought, engraving only the information Mayor Grimes wished her to possess.

"Silly," she laughed. "I don't have a son."

Mayor Grimes ran her hands through her hair, letting loose a sigh. After so many countless nights, it had worked! They were one step closer to ensuring piece begasen humans and monsters, crafted a serum that was undetectable, something that could be slipped into the food of any monster, wipe their minds clean and craft the perfect labor force that would drive humanity in the right direction.

And so she turned towards the team of scientists and with a triumphant smile spread across her features, Mayor Grimes declared, "Let us begin."